The City of God: Volume 1

Book 1: Faith and the Fall of Rome

The glorious city of God is the subject of this work, which you, my dearest son Marcellinus, suggested and which I owe you by my promise. I have undertaken to defend it against those who prefer their own gods to its Founder. This city is supremely glorious, whether we consider it now, living by faith through this passing age as a stranger among the ungodly, or in the enduring stability of its eternal home. It now waits patiently for that home, until “righteousness shall return unto judgment” (Ps 94:15), and it gains, through its excellence, final victory and perfect peace.

This is a great and difficult undertaking, but God is my helper. I know how much ability it takes to persuade the proud of the greatness of humility. Humility raises us above all earthly honors, which totter in this changing world, through divine grace rather than merely human arrogance. For the King and Founder of this city has declared a rule of divine law to his people in Scripture: “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble” (Jas 4:6; 1 Pet 5:5). Yet the swollen ambition of a proud spirit also lays claim to this prerogative of God. It dearly loves to count among its own attributes the power, in Virgil’s words, to

> “Show pity to the humbled soul, > And crush the sons of pride.”

So, as the plan of this work requires and as occasion arises, we must also speak of the earthly city. Though it rules the nations, it is itself ruled by its desire to rule.

1. Enemies Sheltered in Christ’s Name

The enemies against whom I must defend the city of God belong to this earthly city. Many of them, reclaimed from their ungodly error, have become quite respectable citizens of the city of God. But many burn with hatred against it and are so ungrateful to its Redeemer for his remarkable benefits that they forget what saved their lives. They could not now say a single word against this city if, while fleeing the enemy’s sword, they had not found safety in its sacred places. There they preserved the lives in which they now take such pride.

Have not those very Romans whom the barbarians spared out of respect for Christ become enemies of Christ’s name? The shrines of the martyrs and the churches of the apostles bear witness to this. During the sack of the city, they offered sanctuary to everyone who fled to them, Christian or pagan. The bloodthirsty enemy raged up to their very thresholds, but there his murderous fury accepted a limit. Those enemies who felt any pity brought the people they had spared into these places, so that less merciful men would not attack them.

Even the killers who showed no pity anywhere else came to these places and restrained their furious desire to slaughter and their eagerness to take prisoners. Here the violence permitted everywhere else by the license of war was forbidden. In this way multitudes escaped who now reproach the Christian religion and blame Christ for the evils that have fallen on their city. Yet they attribute the preservation of their own lives to good luck rather than to our Christ, though they owe that gift to the barbarians’ respect for him.

If they understood things rightly, they would attribute the harshness and suffering inflicted by their enemies to divine providence. It regularly corrects people’s corrupt conduct through punishment and trains the righteous and praiseworthy through similar afflictions. After their trial, it either takes them to a better world or keeps them on earth for further purposes.

They should also attribute their escape to the spirit of these Christian times. Contrary to the custom of war, these bloodthirsty barbarians spared them for Christ’s sake. This applies whether that mercy was shown in ordinary places or in places specially dedicated to Christ’s name. The very largest of the latter were chosen as sanctuaries, giving ample room to a compassion that wanted a great multitude to find shelter there.

They should therefore thank God and take refuge in his name with a sincere confession, so that they may escape the punishment of eternal fire. They had falsely claimed that name to escape immediate destruction. Among those you now see shamelessly and insolently insulting Christ’s servants are many who would not have escaped the destruction and slaughter if they had not pretended to be his servants themselves. Yet now, with ungrateful pride and utterly ungodly madness, they stubbornly oppose the name under which they fraudulently sheltered. They used it to enjoy the light of this brief life, and now risk punishment in everlasting darkness.

2. Temples and the Customs of War

There are histories of countless wars, both before Rome was built and after its rise and the expansion of its rule. Let them be read. Let anyone cite one instance in which, after foreigners captured a city, the victors spared those who had fled for sanctuary to the temples of their gods. Or let anyone cite one instance in which a barbarian general ordered that no one found in a particular temple should be put to the sword. In Virgil’s account, did not Aeneas see

> “Dying Priam at the shrine, > Staining the hearth he made divine?”

Did not Diomede and Ulysses

> “Drag with red hands, the sentry slain, > Her fateful image from your fane, > Her chaste locks touch, and stain with gore > The virgin coronal she wore?”

Here “fane” means temple, and “coronal” means a crown or wreath.

Nor is the statement that follows true:

> “Thenceforth the tide of fortune changed, > And Greece grew weak.”

For after this the Greeks conquered Troy and destroyed it with fire and sword. After this they beheaded Priam as he fled to the altars. Nor did Troy perish because it lost Minerva. What had Minerva herself lost first, that she should perish? Her guards, perhaps? Certainly, her guards. As soon as they were killed, she could be stolen. In fact, the image did not preserve the men; the men preserved the image. How, then, could she be called on to defend the city and its citizens when she could not defend her own defenders?

3. Rome’s Conquered Gods

And these are the gods to whose protection the Romans delighted to entrust their city! What a pitiful, pitiful mistake! They are enraged at us when we speak this way about their gods. Yet far from being enraged at their own writers, they pay to learn what those writers say. Indeed, the teachers of these authors are considered worthy of public salaries and other honors.

Boys read Virgil so that this great poet, the most famous and admired of all poets, may fill their minds while they are still untouched and may not easily be forgotten. As Horace says,

“The fresh cask long keeps its first tang.”

In this same Virgil, Juno is presented as hostile to the Trojans, stirring up Aeolus, king of the winds, against them with these words:

> “A race I hate now ploughs the sea, > Transporting Troy to Italy, > And home-gods conquered …”

Should prudent men have entrusted Rome’s defense to these conquered gods? Someone will object that this was only Juno speaking, and that, like an angry woman, she did not know what she was saying. What, then, does Aeneas himself say, the Aeneas so often called “pious”? Does he not say,

> “Lo! Panthus, ’scaped from death by flight, > Priest of Apollo on the height, > His conquered gods with trembling hands > He bears, and shelter swift demands!”

Is it not clear that the gods, whom he does not hesitate to call “conquered,” were entrusted to Aeneas rather than he to them? For he is told,

> “The gods of her domestic shrines > Your country to your care consigns!”

Virgil says, then, that these were the sort of gods they had: conquered gods who, once conquered, could escape only under a man’s protection. What madness to suppose that Rome had wisely been entrusted to these guardians and could not have been captured unless it had lost them! To worship conquered gods as protectors and champions is to worship evil omens rather than good divinities.

Would it not be wiser to believe that the gods would have perished long ago if Rome had not preserved them as long as it could, rather than that Rome would never have suffered so great a disaster if the gods had not perished first? Anyone who considers the matter can see how foolish the assumption is. How could the Romans be invincible under defenders who had themselves been defeated? How could the Romans have perished only because they lost their guardian gods, when the sole cause of their ruin was their choice of gods doomed to perish as their protectors?

The poets, then, when they composed and sang these things about the conquered gods, did not intend to invent falsehoods. As honest men, they spoke what the truth forced from them. This will be discussed carefully and at length in another, more suitable place.

Meanwhile, I will explain briefly, as well as I can, what I meant to say about these ungrateful people. They blasphemously blame Christ for the disasters they deservedly suffer because of their own wicked conduct. Yet they do not even trouble to notice what they are spared for Christ’s sake despite their wickedness. In their mad and blasphemous insolence, they attack his name with the very lips that falsely claimed that name to save their lives. In the places dedicated to Christ, where no enemy would hurt them for his sake, they restrained their tongues to remain safe and protected. But as soon as they leave those sanctuaries, they let their tongues loose to hurl hateful curses against him.

4. Juno’s Temple and Christ’s Churches

Troy itself, the mother of the Roman people, could not, as I have said, protect its citizens in their gods’ sacred places from the Greeks’ fire and sword, even though the Greeks worshiped the same gods. More than that, Virgil says,

> “Phoenix and Ulysses fell > In the void courts by Juno’s cell > Were set the spoil to keep; > Snatched from the burning shrines away, > There Ilium’s mighty treasure lay, > Rich altars, bowls of massy gold, > And captive raiment, rudely rolled > In one promiscuous heap; > While boys and matrons, wild with fear, > In long array were standing near.”

Here “fell” describes the men as fierce or cruel; “massy” means massive, and “raiment” means clothing.

In other words, this place dedicated to so great a goddess was chosen to confine all the captives, rather than to ensure that no one could be led away from it as a captive. Compare this “sanctuary” with the churches built in memory of the apostles. It was the sanctuary of no ordinary god, no member of the gods’ rank and file, but of Jove’s own sister and wife, the queen of all the gods.

Into Juno’s temple they gathered the plunder rescued from the blazing temples and snatched from the gods, to divide it among the victors rather than return it to the defeated. Into the churches, by contrast, everything belonging to them was brought back with the greatest religious care and respect, even when it had been found elsewhere. In the temple, freedom was lost; in the churches, it was preserved. In the temple, bondage was strictly enforced; in the churches, it was strictly excluded. Into that temple people were driven to become the property of enemies who now ruled over them. Into these churches people were led by enemies who had relented, so that they might remain free.

The gentle Greeks, then, put Juno’s temple to the service of their own greed and pride. Even the savage barbarians chose Christ’s churches as fitting places for humility and mercy. But perhaps, after all, the victorious Greeks spared the temples of the gods they worshiped in common with the Trojans. Perhaps they did not dare to kill or enslave the wretched, defeated Trojans who fled there. Perhaps Virgil, as poets do, portrayed something that never actually happened. Yet there is no doubt that he portrayed the usual conduct of an enemy sacking a city.

5. Caesar’s Account of a City’s Sack

Caesar himself gives explicit testimony to this custom. In his speech to the senate about the conspirators, as Sallust, a historian of distinguished truthfulness, records, he says “that virgins and boys are violated, children torn from the embrace of their parents, matrons subjected to whatever should be the pleasure of the conquerors, temples and houses plundered, slaughter and burning rife; in short, all things filled with arms, corpses, blood, and wailing.”

If he had not mentioned temples, we might suppose that enemies usually spared the dwellings of the gods. These disasters threatened Rome’s temples at the hands of Catiline and his associates, Rome’s most noble senators and citizens, rather than foreign enemies. But someone may object that these were depraved men, murderers of their own fatherland.

6. Roman Victors and Temple Refugees

Why, then, need our argument consider the many nations that have fought one another and nowhere spared the defeated in their gods’ temples? Let us examine the Romans’ own practice. Let us recall and consider those Romans whose chief praise has been “to spare the vanquished and subdue the proud,” and who, as Sallust says, preferred “rather to forgive than to revenge an injury.” Among the many great cities they have stormed, captured, and overthrown to expand their rule, let someone name the temples they usually exempted, so that anyone taking refuge there remained free.

Or did they really do this, and have the historians suppressed the fact? Can we believe that writers who eagerly searched for things to praise would leave out what they themselves would regard as the most remarkable proofs of religious devotion?

Marcus Marcellus, a distinguished Roman who captured the splendidly adorned city of Syracuse, is said to have mourned its approaching ruin and shed his own tears over it before spilling its blood. He also took steps to preserve the chastity even of his enemies. Before ordering the assault on the city, he issued a decree forbidding the rape of any free person. Yet the city was sacked according to the custom of war. Nowhere do we read that even this chaste and gentle commander ordered that no one who had fled to a particular temple should be harmed. Such an order certainly would not have gone unmentioned, when neither his tears nor his decree protecting chastity could be passed over in silence.

Fabius, who conquered Tarentum, is praised for refraining from taking its images as plunder. His secretary asked what he wanted done with the many statues of the gods that had been captured. Fabius concealed his restraint beneath a joke. He asked what sort they were. When he was told that there were many large images, some of them armed, he said, “Oh, let us leave with the Tarentines their angry gods.”

The writers of Roman history could not pass over either one general’s tears or the other’s laughter, either the first man’s concern for chastity or the second’s joking restraint. How, then, could they ever have left it unmentioned if, out of respect for any enemy’s gods, the Romans had shown this particular mercy: prohibiting slaughter or enslavement in a temple?

7. Mercy in Christ’s Name

All the devastation Rome suffered in the recent disaster, all the slaughter, plundering, burning, and misery, followed the custom of war. What was new was the gentleness shown by savage barbarians. The largest churches were selected and set apart to hold the people whose lives were spared. No one was killed in them or dragged from them by force. Many were brought into them by enemies who had relented, to be set free, and no one was led from them into slavery by merciless foes.

Anyone who does not see that this must be attributed to Christ’s name and the Christian spirit is blind. Anyone who sees it and gives no praise is ungrateful. Anyone who prevents another from praising it is mad. No sensible person should attribute this mercy to the barbarians themselves. Their fierce and bloodthirsty minds were awed, restrained, and wonderfully softened by the one who had said through his prophet so long before, “I will visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquities with stripes; nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from them” (Ps 89:32).

8. Good and Evil Shared by All

Someone may ask, “Why, then, was this divine compassion extended even to the ungodly and ungrateful?” Why else but because it was the mercy of the one who daily “maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt 5:45)?

Some of these people reflect on this, repent of their wickedness, and reform. Others, as the apostle says, “despising the riches of His goodness and long-suffering, after their hardness and impenitent heart, treasure up unto themselves wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds” (Rom 2:4). Nevertheless, God’s patience continues to invite the wicked to repentance, just as his punishment trains the good in patience. His mercy embraces the good to cherish them, just as his severity overtakes the wicked to punish them.

Divine providence has chosen to prepare good things for the righteous in the world to come that the unrighteous will not enjoy, and evil things for the wicked that will not torment the good. But God has willed that the good and evil things of this life should be shared by both. In this way we should neither covet too eagerly the things we see wicked people enjoying equally, nor shrink with improper fear from the evils that even good people often suffer.

There is also a very great difference in the purpose served by events we call adverse and those we call prosperous. A good person is neither puffed up by this life’s blessings nor broken by its troubles. But a wicked person, corrupted by this world’s happiness, feels punished by its unhappiness.

Yet even in the present distribution of earthly things, God often plainly shows his intervention. If every sin now received visible punishment, nothing would seem to be reserved for the final judgment. On the other hand, if no sin now received plainly divine punishment, people would conclude that there was no divine providence at all.

The same holds for the good things of this life. If God did not give them with very evident generosity to some who ask for them, we would say that these things were not in his power. If he gave them to everyone who sought them, we would suppose that they were the only rewards for serving him. Such service would make us greedy and covetous rather than godly.

Although good and bad people suffer alike, we must not suppose that the people themselves are alike because their sufferings are alike. Even when the sufferings are similar, the sufferers remain different. Virtue and vice do not become the same thing when exposed to the same anguish.

The same fire makes gold shine and chaff smoke. Under the same threshing flail, straw is broken up while grain is cleaned. The dregs do not mix with the oil, although the same pressure squeezes both out of the vat. In the same way, the force of affliction tests, purifies, and refines the good, but condemns, ruins, and destroys the wicked. Under the same affliction, the wicked hate God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise. What matters so greatly is the kind of person who suffers, rather than the evils suffered. Stir mud and fragrant ointment in the same way: one gives off a horrible stench, the other a sweet scent.

9. Why Good and Bad Suffer Together

What have Christians suffered in that disastrous time that could not benefit anyone who carefully and faithfully considers the following circumstances? First, they must humbly consider the very sins that have provoked God to fill the world with such terrible disasters. Although they are far from the excesses of wicked, immoral, and ungodly people, they do not consider themselves so free from every fault that they are too good to suffer even the troubles of this life on account of those faults.

Everyone, however praiseworthy their life, yields in some respects to the desires of the flesh. Even without falling into gross wickedness, unrestrained vice, or abominable profanity, a person slips into some sins. This may happen rarely, or more frequently because the sins seem less serious.

But leaving this aside, where can we readily find anyone who forms a fitting and just judgment of the people whose revolting pride, luxury, greed, accursed wrongdoing, and ungodliness have brought God’s blows upon the earth, as his predictions warned? Where is the person who lives among them as we ought?

We often wickedly close our eyes to opportunities to teach and warn them, and sometimes even to reprimand and rebuke them. We shrink from the effort, feel embarrassed about offending them, or fear losing valuable friendships. We fear that this loss might hinder our advancement or harm some worldly interest: something our greed wants to gain or our weakness fears to lose.

Good people dislike the conduct of the wicked and therefore do not fall with them into the condemnation awaiting such people in the next life. Yet fear makes them leave these damnable sins unchallenged. So, even though their own sins are slight and pardonable, they are justly punished alongside the wicked in this world, although they escape punishment entirely in eternity. When God afflicts them together with the wicked, they rightly find this life bitter. Their love of its sweetness had kept them from speaking bitter truths to these sinners.

Someone may refrain from reproving and criticizing wrongdoers because he is waiting for a more suitable opportunity. Or he may fear that his rebuke will make them worse, or discourage other weak people from striving to live good and devout lives and drive them from the faith. Such restraint seems to arise from loving consideration rather than greed.

What deserves blame is something else. People who reject the conduct of the wicked and live quite differently nevertheless leave unchallenged the faults they ought to rebuke and help others abandon. They do so because they fear giving offense and harming their interests in things that good people may innocently and legitimately use. Yet they use these things more greedily than befits people who are strangers in this world and profess hope in a heavenly homeland.

This does not concern only the weaker brothers and sisters who enjoy married life, have children or want them, and own houses and households. The apostle addresses them in the churches, warning and teaching wives how to live with their husbands, husbands with their wives, children with their parents, parents with their children, servants with their masters, and masters with their servants. These weaker believers gladly acquire many earthly and temporary things and reluctantly lose them. For the sake of those things, they dare not offend people whose corrupt and wicked lives greatly displease them.

But even those who live at a higher level, free from the entanglements of married life and content with scant food and clothing, often think of their own safety and reputation. They refrain from criticizing the wicked because they fear their schemes and violence. Their fear does not go so far as to draw them into the same wrongdoing, even under any threat or violence. Yet they often refuse to criticize the very deeds they will not commit, although criticism might prevent those deeds.

They hold back because they fear that, if their intervention does no good, their own safety or reputation may be damaged or destroyed. They are not preserving their safety and good name because these are needed to influence people who require their instruction. Rather, in their weakness they enjoy people’s flattery and respect, fear public judgment, and dread bodily pain or death. Their failure to intervene comes from selfishness rather than love.

This seems to me one principal reason why the good are punished along with the wicked when God chooses to visit a community’s depraved conduct with temporal punishments. They are punished together because both good and wicked people love this present life, although not equally. It is not because they have lived equally corrupt lives. The good ought to place little value on this life, so that the wicked, warned and reformed by their example, might take hold of eternal life.

If the wicked refuse to join the good in seeking everlasting life, they should be loved as enemies and treated patiently. As long as they live, it remains uncertain whether they may change for the better.

These selfish people have more reason to fear than those addressed through the prophet: “He is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand” (Ezek 33:6). Watchmen, or overseers of the people, are appointed in churches to rebuke sin without holding back. But a person need not be a watchman to be guilty of the sin we are discussing. Someone may see much that deserves blame in the conduct of people brought into contact with him through everyday relationships, yet overlook it for fear of giving offense and losing worldly blessings. These blessings may legitimately be desired, but he clings to them too eagerly.

Finally, there is another reason why the good suffer temporal disasters, illustrated by Job’s case. The human spirit is tested, revealing the steadfastness of its devout trust and the love with which it clings to God without seeking reward.

10. Losing Earthly Possessions

These are the considerations we must keep in view when asking whether any evil happens to the faithful and godly that cannot be turned to their benefit. Or shall we say that the question is unnecessary, and that the apostle is merely boasting when he says, “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God” (Rom 8:28)?

They lost everything they had. Their faith? Their godliness? The possessions of the inner person of the heart, which are precious in God’s sight (1 Pet 3:4)? Did they lose these? These are the riches of Christians. To them the wealthy apostle said, “Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment, let us be therewith content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil; which, while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows” (1 Tim 6:6-10).

Those who lost all their worldly possessions in the sack of Rome could speak in the words of Job, severely tried but not overcome, if they had held their possessions as the apostle taught. He himself was poor outwardly but rich within. That is, if they used the world as though not using it, they could say, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so has it come to pass: blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). Like a good servant, Job regarded his Lord’s will as his great possession. Obedience to that will enriched his soul. He did not grieve to lose while still alive the goods he would soon have to leave at death.

But weaker souls, though they cannot be said to prefer earthly possessions to Christ, still cling to them with a somewhat excessive attachment. Through the pain of losing these things, they have discovered how much they sinned by loving them. Their grief is of their own making. In the apostle’s words quoted above, “they have pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” It was good that those who had so long disregarded these spoken warnings should learn through experience.

When the apostle says, “They that will be rich fall into temptation,” and so on, he condemns the desire for riches, rather than their possession. Elsewhere he says, “Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; that they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate; laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life” (1 Tim 6:17-19).

Those who used their property this way have been consoled for small losses by great gains. They have taken more pleasure in the possessions they safely stored away by freely giving them away than grief in those they lost entirely through anxious, selfish hoarding. For nothing could perish on earth except what they would be ashamed to carry away from earth. Our Lord’s command is, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matt 6:19-21).

Those who listened to this command have learned in their time of trouble how wisely they acted. They did not disregard this most trustworthy teacher, this most faithful and powerful guardian of their treasure. Many were glad that their treasure lay in places the enemy happened not to discover. How much stronger were the grounds for joy among those who, following God’s counsel, had fled with their treasure to a fortress no enemy could possibly reach!

Our Paulinus, bishop of Nola, voluntarily gave up immense wealth and became quite poor, though abundantly rich in holiness. When the barbarians sacked Nola and took him prisoner, he used to pray silently, as he later told me, “O Lord, let me not be troubled for gold and silver, for where all my treasure is you know.” All his treasure was where he had been taught to hide and store it by the one who had also foretold that these calamities would happen in the world. Consequently, those who obeyed their Lord’s warning about where and how to store treasure did not lose even their earthly possessions in the barbarian invasion. Those who now regret not obeying him have learned the right use of earthly goods, if not through the wisdom that would have prevented their loss, at least through the experience that follows it.

But some good Christian men were tortured to force them to hand their goods over to the enemy. They could neither surrender nor lose the good that made them good. If, however, they preferred torture to surrendering the wealth of unrighteousness, then I say they were not good men. Instead, they should have been reminded that, if they suffered so severely for money, they ought to endure every torment, if necessary, for Christ. They should have learned to love him, who enriches all who suffer for him with eternal happiness, rather than silver and gold. It was pitiable to suffer for these, whether they kept them by lying or lost them by telling the truth. Under these tortures, no one lost Christ by confessing him, and no one preserved wealth except by denying that it existed.

Perhaps, then, the torture was more useful than the possessions. It taught them to set their affections on a possession they could not lose. Their worldly possessions, yielding no useful fruit at all, had disturbed and tormented their anxious owners. But we are reminded that some people were tortured who had no wealth to surrender, and were not believed when they said so. Perhaps these people too had some craving for wealth, and did not willingly accept poverty with holy resignation. If so, they needed to learn that the desire for wealth, as well as its actual possession, deserved such agonizing pains.

Some may have had no hidden stores of gold or silver because they lived in hope of a better life. I do not know whether anyone of this kind was tortured on the assumption that he had wealth. But if anyone was, then by acknowledging his holy poverty under interrogation, he certainly confessed Christ. Although one could hardly expect the barbarians to believe him, no one who confessed a holy poverty could be tortured without receiving a heavenly reward.

Again, they say that the long famine brought many Christians low. But the faithful also turned this to good use by enduring it with devotion. Those whom the famine killed outright were rescued from the evils of this life, as they might have been by a merciful disease. Those who suffered hunger but survived were taught to live more sparingly and became accustomed to longer fasts.

11. Death and the Length of Life

But, they add, many Christians were slaughtered and put to death in a hideous variety of cruel ways. Well, if death is hard to bear, it is certainly the common lot of everyone born into this life. Of this, at least, I am sure: no one has ever died who was not destined to die sometime. The end of life places the longest life on the same footing as the shortest. When two things have alike ceased to exist, one is not better and the other worse, one greater and the other less.

What does it matter what kind of death ends a life, since someone who has died once is not forced to undergo the same ordeal a second time? In the daily hazards of life, each person is threatened, as it were, with countless deaths. As long as it remains uncertain which will be his fate, I ask whether it is better to suffer one and die, or to live in fear of them all. I know the fainthearted fear that makes us choose to live long in fear of so many deaths rather than die once and escape them all. But the weak, fearful shrinking of the flesh is one thing; the soul’s considered and reasonable conviction is another.

A death that ends a good life should not be judged an evil. Death becomes evil only through the punishment that follows it. Those who are destined to die need not concern themselves with what death they will suffer, but with where death will bring them. Christians know well that the death of the godly poor man, whose sores the dogs licked, was far better than the death of the wicked rich man who lay dressed in purple and fine linen. What harm, then, could these terrible deaths do to those who had lived well?

12. When the Dead Remain Unburied

We are further reminded that, amid such slaughter, the bodies could not even be buried. But confidence in God is not shaken by a circumstance that seems to bode so ill. The faithful remember the assurance that not a hair of their heads shall perish. Even if beasts devour them, their blessed resurrection will not be hindered.

The Truth would never have said, “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul,” if anything an enemy could do to the bodies of the slain could harm their future life (Matt 10:28). Or will someone take the absurd position that we should not fear those who kill the body before death, lest they kill it, but should fear them after death, lest they deny it burial? If so, Christ’s words would be false: “Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do” (Luke 12:4). For on that reasoning, they could do great harm to the dead body. Far be it from us to suppose that the Truth could be false in this way!

Those who kill the body are said “to do something” because the fatal blow is felt while the body still has sensation. After that, they have no more that they can do, because the slain body has no sensation. Many Christian bodies do indeed lie unburied. But no one has separated them from heaven, or from the earth, which is entirely filled with the presence of the one who knows where to raise again what he created.

The Psalm does say, “The dead bodies of Thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of Thy saints unto the beasts of the earth. Their blood have they shed like water round about Jerusalem; and there was none to bury them” (Ps 79:2-3). But these words display the cruelty of those who did these things more than the misery of those who suffered them. To human eyes, this appears a harsh and mournful fate. Yet “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints” (Ps 116:15).

All these final services and ceremonies for the dead, the careful funeral arrangements, the furnishing of the tomb, and the splendor of the funeral procession, console the living more than they comfort the dead. If a costly burial benefits a wicked man, then a poor burial, or no burial at all, may harm the godly. The rich man’s crowd of servants gave him, dressed in purple, a funeral splendid in human eyes. But in God’s sight, the poor man covered in sores received a more magnificent funeral from the angels. They did not carry him to a marble tomb, but bore him upward to Abraham’s bosom.

The people against whom I have undertaken to defend the city of God laugh at all this. Yet even their own philosophers have scorned the care taken over burial. Often whole armies have fought and fallen for their earthly country without troubling to ask whether they would be left exposed on the battlefield or become food for wild beasts. Of this noble disregard for burial, Lucan’s poetry has well said, “He who has no tomb has the sky for his vault.” How much less, then, should they mock the unburied bodies of Christians! Christians have been promised that their very flesh will be restored and their bodies formed anew. All their members will be gathered, not only from the earth, but from the most hidden recesses of any other elements in which human bodies have lain concealed.

13. Why the Dead Should Be Buried

Nevertheless, this does not mean that the bodies of the dead should be despised and left unburied. Least of all should we neglect the bodies of the righteous and faithful, which the Holy Spirit has used as his organs and instruments for every good work. A father’s clothes, his ring, or anything he wore is precious to his children in proportion to their love for him. How much more reason have we to care for the bodies of those we love, which they wore far more closely and intimately than any clothing! The body is not an external ornament or aid, but part of a person’s very nature.

For this reason, the righteous in ancient times received devout final services, tombs, and funeral ceremonies (Gen 25:9; Gen 35:29, etc.). While still alive, they instructed their sons about their burial, and sometimes even about moving their bodies to a favored place (Gen 47:29; Gen 50:24). According to the angel’s testimony, Tobit is praised and said to have pleased God by burying the dead (Tob 12:12). Our Lord himself, though he was to rise again on the third day, praised the good work of the devout woman who poured precious ointment over his limbs in preparation for his burial. He commends her deed to our praise as well (Matt 26:10-13). The Gospel also speaks approvingly of those who carefully took his body down from the cross, lovingly wrapped it in costly burial cloths, and attended to its burial (John 19:38).

These examples certainly do not prove that corpses have any feeling. They show that God’s providence extends even to the bodies of the dead, and that these devout services please him by nurturing faith in the resurrection. We can also draw a wholesome lesson from them. If God does not forget even a kindness that loving care shows to the unfeeling dead, how much more does he reward the charity we show to the living! Other things the holy patriarchs said about the burial and removal of their bodies were intended prophetically. We need not discuss these at length here, since what we have already said is enough.

The lack of necessities that sustain the living, such as food and clothing, is painful and trying. Yet it does not break the courage and virtuous endurance of good people or uproot devotion from their souls. Instead, it makes that devotion more fruitful. How much less, then, can the absence of a funeral and the other customary attentions to the dead make those miserable who already rest in the hidden dwellings of the blessed!

Consequently, although Christian bodies were deprived of these final services in the sack of Rome and other towns, this was neither the fault of the living nor an injury to the dead. The living could not perform the services, and the dead cannot feel their loss.

14. God’s Consolation in Captivity

“But many Christians were even taken captive,” they say. This would indeed be a most pitiable fate if they could be carried anywhere they could not find their God. But sacred Scripture offers great consolation for this calamity too. The three young men were captives (Dan 3). Daniel was a captive, as were other prophets, and God, their comforter, did not fail them. In the same way, he has not failed his own people in the power of a nation that, though barbarous, is still human. He did not abandon the prophet Jonah in the belly of a monster.

Those with whom we are debating ridicule these things rather than believe them. Yet they believe what they read in their own books: that Arion of Methymna, the famous lyric poet, was thrown overboard, received on a dolphin’s back, and carried to land. But our story about the prophet Jonah is far more incredible. It is more incredible because it is more marvelous, and more marvelous because it displays greater power.

15. Regulus and Religious Duty

Among their own famous men, however, they have a very noble example of someone who willingly endured captivity out of religious duty. Marcus Attilius Regulus, a Roman general, was a prisoner of the Carthaginians. They were more eager to exchange prisoners with the Romans than to keep them. So they sent Regulus as a special envoy, along with their own ambassadors, to negotiate the exchange. First, however, they bound him by an oath to return to Carthage if he failed to accomplish their wish.

He went and persuaded the senate to take the opposite course, because he believed an exchange of prisoners would not benefit the Roman republic. After he had used his influence in this way, the Romans did not force him to return to the enemy. He voluntarily did what he had sworn to do. But the Carthaginians put him to death with ingenious, elaborate, and horrible tortures. They shut him in a narrow box that forced him to stand. Finely sharpened nails were fixed all around him, so that he could not lean against any part of it without intense pain. In this way, they killed him by depriving him of sleep.

They rightly applaud the virtue that rose above so dreadful a fate. Yet the gods by whom he swore were the very gods now supposed to be avenging the prohibition of their worship by inflicting these present calamities on humanity. These gods were worshiped specifically to obtain happiness in this life. If they either willed or permitted such punishments to fall on someone who kept his oath to them, what crueler punishment could they have inflicted in anger on someone who broke his oath?

Why should I not draw two conclusions from this reasoning? Regulus certainly had such reverence for the gods that, for the sake of his oath, he would neither remain in his own country nor go elsewhere. Without hesitation, he returned to his bitterest enemies. If he thought this course would benefit him in the present life, he was certainly much deceived, for it brought his life to a dreadful end. His own example taught that the gods do not secure the earthly happiness of their worshipers. Though devoted to their worship, he was defeated in battle and taken prisoner. Then, because he refused to violate the oath he had sworn by them, he was tortured and killed by a new, previously unheard-of, and all too horrible punishment.

Suppose, on the other hand, that those who worship the gods are rewarded with happiness in the life to come. Why, then, do these people slander the influence of Christianity? Why do they claim that this disaster overtook the city because it stopped worshiping its gods? However diligently it worships them, the city may still be as unfortunate as Regulus. Or will someone carry such extraordinary blindness so far as to argue wildly against the evident truth that one man might be unfortunate despite worshiping the gods, but a whole city could not? That would mean their gods’ power is better suited to preserving multitudes than individuals, as if a multitude were not made up of individuals.

But if they say that Marcus Regulus could enjoy the blessedness of a virtuous soul even as a prisoner suffering these bodily torments, then let them recognize the true virtue by which a city too can be blessed. A community’s blessedness and an individual’s flow from the same source. A community is simply a harmonious gathering of individuals. For now, I am not concerned to discuss what kind of virtue Regulus possessed. It is enough that his very noble example forces them to admit that the gods should not be worshiped for bodily comforts or outward advantages. He preferred to lose all these things rather than offend the gods by whom he had sworn.

What, then, can we make of people who glory in having such a citizen but dread having a city like him? If they do not dread this, let them acknowledge that a calamity like the one that befell Regulus may also befall a community, though its people worship their gods as diligently as he did. Let them stop blaming Christianity for their misfortunes.

But our present concern is with Christians taken prisoner. Those who use this calamity to abuse our most beneficial religion, in a manner as foolish as it is shameless, should consider the following and keep silent. If it was no reproach to their gods that a most scrupulous worshiper, for the sake of keeping his oath to them, was deprived of his native land without hope of finding another, fell into his enemies’ hands, and was killed by prolonged and excruciating torture, much less should the Christian name be blamed for the captivity of those who believe in its power. In confident expectation of a heavenly country, they know they are pilgrims even in their own homes.

16. Chastity and Sexual Violence

They imagine they bring a decisive charge against Christianity when they heighten the horror of captivity by adding that wives, unmarried young women, and even consecrated virgins were raped. Yet this presents no difficulty for Christian faith, devotion, or even the virtue of chastity. The only difficulty is to discuss the subject in a way that satisfies both modesty and reason. In discussing it, we will be more concerned to comfort our friends than to answer our accusers.

Let us first establish this unassailable position. The virtue that makes life good has its throne in the soul. From there it rules the body’s members, and the body becomes holy through the holiness of the will. While the will remains firm and unshaken, nothing another person does with or to someone’s body is the fault of the person who suffers it, so long as that person cannot escape it without sin.

But the body of another can be used to gratify lust as well as to inflict pain. Whenever lust is gratified in this way, shame invades even a thoroughly pure spirit whose modesty remains intact. The person fears that an act that could not be suffered without some sensual pleasure will be thought to have occurred with some consent of the will as well.

17. Suicide to Escape Dishonor

Consequently, even if some of these virgins killed themselves to avoid such disgrace, who with any human feeling would refuse to forgive them? As for those who refused to end their lives, lest they escape another person’s crime through a sin of their own, anyone who treats their refusal as a great wickedness is himself guilty of folly.

It is unlawful to take the law into our own hands and kill even a guilty person whose death has not been authorized by a public sentence. Certainly, then, anyone who kills himself commits homicide. His guilt in causing his own death is all the greater, the more innocent he was of the offense for which he sentenced himself to die.

Do we rightly condemn Judas’s deed? Does truth itself declare that, by hanging himself, he aggravated rather than atoned for the guilt of that most wicked betrayal? In his sorrow that brought death, he despaired of God’s mercy and left himself no room for healing repentance. How much more should someone refrain from violently taking his own life when he has done nothing deserving such a punishment!

When Judas killed himself, he killed a wicked man. But he left this life accountable for his own death as well as Christ’s. Although he killed himself because of his crime, killing himself was another crime. Why, then, should someone who has done no wrong wrong himself? Why should he kill an innocent person by killing himself to escape another’s guilty act? Why should he commit a sin against himself to prevent another person’s sin from being committed against him?

18. Purity Under Bodily Violence

But is there a fear that another person’s lust may pollute the person subjected to it? It will not pollute that person if the lust belongs to someone else. If it does pollute, then the lust is shared by the person polluted rather than belonging to the other person alone.

Purity is a virtue of the soul. Its companion virtue is courage, which would endure every evil suffered rather than consent to doing evil. And no one, however courageous and pure, always has control of his own body. He can control only his will’s consent or refusal. What reasonable person, then, could suppose that he loses his purity if his body is seized and forcibly used to satisfy another person’s lust?

If purity could be destroyed in this way, it would certainly be no virtue of the soul. It would belong among the good things of the body, rather than among the good things that make life good. It would stand alongside strength, beauty, sound and unbroken health, and all such goods as can be diminished without diminishing the goodness and uprightness of our life at all. But if purity were no better than these, why should the body be put in danger to preserve it? If, on the other hand, purity belongs to the soul, it is not lost even when the body is violated.

Moreover, the virtue of holy self-restraint sanctifies even the body when it resists the uncleanness of bodily lust. When this self-restraint remains undefeated, even the body’s holiness is preserved. The will to use the body in holiness remains, as does the ability, so far as that ability depends on the body itself.

The body’s holiness does not consist in its members remaining intact or untouched. They are exposed to various accidents that injure and wound them. Surgeons providing relief often perform operations that make spectators feel sick. Suppose a midwife, while trying to determine whether a girl is a virgin, destroys her virginity, whether maliciously, accidentally, or through lack of skill. I suppose no one is so foolish as to believe that the loss of the intact condition of one organ has cost the virgin anything even of her bodily holiness.

Thus, as long as the soul retains the firmness of purpose that sanctifies even the body, violence committed through another person’s lust has no effect on this bodily holiness. It is preserved intact by the person’s own continuing self-restraint.

Suppose a virgin breaks the oath she has sworn to God and goes to meet her seducer with the intention of yielding to him. Shall we say that, as she goes, she still possesses bodily holiness, when she has already lost and destroyed the holiness of soul that sanctifies the body? Far be it from us to misuse words in this way.

Instead, let us draw this conclusion: when the soul’s holiness remains, even though the body is violated, the body’s holiness is not lost. In the same way, when the soul’s holiness is violated, the body’s holiness is lost, even though the body remains intact. Therefore, a woman who has been violated through another person’s sin, without any consent of her own, has no reason to put herself to death. Still less has she reason to kill herself to avoid such violation. In that case, she commits a certain homicide to prevent a crime that is still uncertain and is not her own.

19. Lucretia’s Death and Innocence

This, then, is our position, and it seems clear enough. We maintain that when a woman is violated while her soul gives no consent to the wrong but remains inviolably chaste, the sin belongs to her attacker, not to her. Do those against whom we must defend both the souls and the sacred bodies of these abused Christian captives dare to dispute this position? Everyone knows how loudly they praise the purity of Lucretia, that noble married woman of ancient Rome. When King Tarquin’s son had violated her body, she told her husband Collatinus and her kinsman Brutus about this depraved young man’s wickedness. These were men of high rank and great courage, and she bound them by an oath to avenge it. Then, sick at heart and unable to bear the shame, she ended her life.

What should we call her? An adulteress, or a chaste woman? There is no question which she was. A public speaker described this sad event in words as true as they were apt: “Here was a marvel: there were two, and only one committed adultery.” This was forcefully and truly said. In the union of the two bodies, the speaker recognized the filthy lust of one and the chaste will of the other. He considered not the contact of their bodily members but the great difference between their souls, and said: “There were two, but the adultery was committed only by one.”

But how is it that the woman who took no part in the crime bears the heavier punishment? The adulterer was merely banished along with his father; she suffered the ultimate penalty. If the rape she unwillingly suffered did not make her impure, then the punishment of a chaste woman cannot be just. I appeal to you, laws and judges of Rome. Even after the most terrible crimes, you do not allow a criminal to be killed without a trial. Suppose someone brought this case before your court and proved that a woman had been killed who was not only untried but chaste and innocent. Would you not impose a correspondingly severe punishment on her murderer?

Lucretia committed this crime. That celebrated and much-praised Lucretia killed the innocent, chaste, violated Lucretia. Pronounce sentence. But if you cannot, because no one appears before you whom you can punish, why do you praise without measure the woman who killed an innocent and chaste woman? You will certainly find it impossible to defend her before the judges of the underworld, if they are as your poets like to portray them. For she is among those described in Virgil’s Aeneid:

> “Who guiltless sent themselves to doom, > And all for loathing of the day, > In madness threw their lives away.”

And if she wishes to return with the others,

> “Fate bars the way: around their keep > The slow unlovely waters creep, > And bind with ninefold chain.”

Or perhaps she is not there because she killed herself conscious of guilt rather than innocence? She alone knows her reason. But what if the pleasure of the act betrayed her, and she gave some consent to Sextus, although he was abusing her so violently? What if she was then so overcome with remorse that she thought only death could atone for her sin? Even if this were the case, she should still have refrained from suicide, if fruitful repentance had been possible for her with her false gods.

But suppose this was what happened, and it was false that there were two people but only one committed adultery. Suppose both were involved, one through open assault and the other through secret consent. Then she did not kill an innocent woman. Her learned defenders may therefore maintain that she is not among those inhabitants of the underworld “who guiltless sent themselves to doom.” Yet Lucretia’s case presents this dilemma: if you lessen the guilt of the killing, you establish the adultery; if you acquit her of adultery, you make the charge of murder heavier. There is no escape from the dilemma when we ask: If she was adulterous, why praise her? If she was chaste, why kill her?

Still, our purpose is to refute those who cannot understand true holiness and therefore mock our violated Christian women. For this purpose, it is enough that people said in praise of this noble Roman woman, “There were two, but the adultery was the crime of only one.” They firmly believed that Lucretia was untouched by the contamination of any thought consenting to the adultery. Since she killed herself because of an assault in which she had no guilty part, her action was plainly prompted by the crushing burden of shame rather than love of purity.

She was ashamed that so foul a crime had been committed against her, although she had not assisted in it. With the Roman love of glory in her veins, this woman was seized by a proud fear. If she went on living, she feared people would think she had willingly accepted the wrong done to her without resentment. She could not show people her conscience, but she thought her self-inflicted punishment would testify to her state of mind. She burned with shame at the thought that patiently enduring another person’s vile assault would be interpreted as complicity with him.

The Christian women who suffered as she did and still live made a different decision. They refused to punish themselves for the guilt of others and so add crimes of their own to crimes in which they had no share. They would have done just that if shame had driven them to murder, as their enemies’ lust had driven those enemies to adultery. Within their souls, through the testimony of their own consciences, they enjoy the glory of chastity. God, too, regards them as pure, and this satisfies them. They ask for nothing more. It is enough to have the opportunity to do good. They refuse to escape the distress of human suspicion at the cost of departing from divine law.

20. The Command Against Suicide

It is significant that nowhere in the holy canonical books can we find either a divine command or permission to take our own lives. This holds whether we seek to begin enjoying immortality, avoid something, or free ourselves from anything at all. Indeed, rightly understood, the law prohibits suicide when it says, “Thou shalt not kill.”

This is especially evident from the absence of the words “thy neighbour,” which are included in the prohibition of false witness: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” Yet no one should therefore suppose that bearing false witness only against oneself does not break that commandment. Our love of our neighbor is measured by our love of ourselves, as it is written, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

Someone who makes false statements about himself is no less guilty of bearing false witness than if he had made them to injure his neighbor. This is so even though the commandment against false witness mentions only his neighbor, and a careless reader might suppose that a person was allowed to bear false witness to his own harm. We have still greater reason, then, to understand that a person may not kill himself. The commandment “Thou shalt not kill” includes no limitation or exception in anyone’s favor, least of all in favor of the person to whom it is addressed.

Some try to extend this command even to beasts and cattle, as though it forbade us to take the life of any creature. But if so, why not extend it to plants and everything rooted in and nourished by the earth? Although these creatures have no sensation, they too are said to live. They can therefore die and, if violence is done to them, be killed. The apostle, speaking of their seeds, says, “That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die” (1 Cor 15:36). And the Psalm says, “He killed their vines with hail” (Ps 78:47). Must we therefore count picking a flower as breaking the commandment “Thou shalt not kill”? Are we to be so mad as to endorse the foolish error of the Manichaeans?

Let us set aside these ravings. When we say, “Thou shalt not kill,” we do not mean plants, which have no sensation. Nor do we mean the irrational animals that fly, swim, walk, or crawl. Their lack of reason separates them from us, and by the Creator’s just arrangement they are subject to us, to be killed or kept alive for our use. The commandment, then, must be understood simply as referring to human beings. It means, “Thou shalt not kill man.” Therefore you must kill neither another person nor yourself, for someone who kills himself still kills a human being.

21. Exceptions to the Ban on Killing

Divine authority, however, makes some exceptions to its own law against putting people to death. These exceptions are of two kinds. They are justified either by a general law or by a special commission temporarily granted to an individual. In the latter case, the person who receives the authority is merely a sword in the hand of the one who uses it. He is not himself responsible for the death he inflicts.

Accordingly, those who have waged war in obedience to a divine command have not violated the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” Nor have those who, in accordance with God’s laws, have acted as representatives of public justice or the wisdom of government and, in that capacity, put wicked people to death. Abraham was not merely judged innocent of cruelty but praised for his devotion because he was ready to kill his son in obedience to God rather than to his own passion.

It is also reasonable to ask whether Jephthah killed his daughter in obedience to a command from God. She had come to meet him after he vowed to sacrifice to God whatever first met him when he returned victorious from battle. Samson, too, brought down the house on himself and his enemies together. His action is justified only on the ground that the Spirit who worked wonders through him had secretly instructed him to do it.

Apart from these two kinds of cases, justified either by a just law of general application or by a special instruction from God himself, the source of all justice, anyone who kills a human being, whether himself or another, incurs the guilt of murder.

22. Suicide and Greatness of Soul

Perhaps those who have taken their own lives should be admired for their greatness of soul, even though we cannot praise their sound judgment. But look more closely. You will hardly call it greatness of soul when someone kills himself rather than endure hardships of fortune or sins in which he has no part. Is an inability to bear bodily enslavement or the foolish opinion of the crowd not evidence of a weak mind? Surely the greater mind faces life’s evils rather than fleeing them. Compared with the clarity and purity of conscience, it values human judgment little, especially the judgment of the crowd, so often clouded by error.

If suicide is to be considered an act of greatness of soul, then no one deserves a higher place than Cleombrotus. According to the story, after reading Plato’s book on the immortality of the soul, he threw himself from a wall. He thus passed from this life to the one he believed was better. No calamity pressed him to do so. Nor did any accusation, true or false, threaten him that he could not well have outlived. In short, nothing but greatness of soul urged him to seek death and break free from this life’s sweet confinement.

Yet Plato himself, whose work he had read, would have told him that this action showed greatness of soul rather than that it was justifiable. Plato would certainly have been eager to commit suicide, or at least recommend it, if his brilliant intellect had not discerned both that the soul was immortal and that seeking immortality through suicide should be forbidden rather than encouraged.

Again, we are told that many people have killed themselves to prevent an enemy from killing them. But we are asking whether they ought to have done it, not whether they did. Sound judgment must take precedence even over examples. Indeed, examples agree with the voice of reason, but not all examples do so. Only those distinguished by their devotion to God are worthy of imitation in proportion to that devotion.

We can cite no example of suicide among the patriarchs, prophets, or apostles. When our Lord Jesus Christ warned them to flee from city to city if they were persecuted, he could readily have used that occasion to advise them to take their own lives and so escape their persecutors. Yet he did not do this or propose this way of leaving life, although he was addressing his own friends, for whom he had promised to prepare everlasting homes. Clearly, then, examples drawn from the “nations that forget God” give worshipers of the one true God no warrant to imitate them.

23. Cato’s Refusal to Live

Apart from Lucretia, about whom enough has already been said, advocates of suicide have difficulty finding another example that could establish a rule, unless it is Cato, who killed himself at Utica. They appeal to him not because he was the only man to do this, but because he was so highly regarded as learned and excellent. They can therefore plausibly maintain that what he did was, and remains, a good thing to do.

But what can I say about his action except that his own friends, men as enlightened as he was, wisely tried to dissuade him? They therefore judged his action to express weakness of spirit rather than strength. In their judgment, it came from weakness recoiling from hardship, rather than an honorable feeling seeking to forestall shame.

Indeed, Cato condemns himself by the advice he gave his dearly loved son. If living under Caesar’s rule was disgraceful, why did the father urge his son to accept that disgrace by encouraging him to trust completely in Caesar’s generosity? Why did he not persuade his son to die with him? Torquatus was praised for putting his son to death because, contrary to orders, he had engaged the enemy, even though successfully. Why, then, did the defeated Cato spare his defeated son when he did not spare himself? Was winning against orders more disgraceful than submitting to a victor against accepted ideas of honor?

Cato cannot, then, have considered it shameful to live under Caesar’s rule. If he had, his sword would have delivered his son from that disgrace. The truth is that his love for his son, whom he hoped and wished Caesar would spare, was no greater than his envy of the glory Caesar would gain by pardoning Cato himself. Caesar is indeed reported to have said as much. Or, if envy is too strong a word, let us say Cato was ashamed that this glory should belong to Caesar.

24. Regulus and Christian Endurance

Our opponents take offense when we prefer the holy Job to Cato. Job endured dreadful bodily suffering rather than free himself from all torment by taking his own life. They are likewise offended when we prefer other saints, whom our authoritative and trustworthy books describe as enduring captivity and oppression by their enemies rather than committing suicide. But our opponents’ own books entitle us to prefer Marcus Regulus to Marcus Cato.

Cato had never defeated Caesar. When Caesar defeated him, he scorned submission and killed himself to escape it. Regulus, by contrast, had previously defeated the Carthaginians. As commander of Rome’s army, he had won a victory for the Roman republic that no citizen could mourn and that even the enemy had to admire. Yet afterward, when they in turn defeated him, he preferred to be their prisoner rather than place himself beyond their reach by suicide. Patient under Carthaginian rule and constant in his love of the Romans, he deprived neither the Carthaginians of his conquered body nor the Romans of his unconquered spirit.

Nor was it love of life that kept him from killing himself. He made this clear enough by returning without hesitation, because of his promise and oath, to those same enemies. His words in the senate had provoked them even more deeply than his weapons in battle. He valued life so little that he preferred to end it by whatever tortures his enraged enemies might devise rather than by his own hand. He could not have shown more clearly how great a crime he considered suicide.

Among all their famous and remarkable citizens, the Romans have no better man to boast of. Prosperity did not corrupt him, for he remained very poor after winning such victories. Adversity did not break him, for he returned fearlessly to a most miserable death.

These brave and renowned heroes had only an earthly country to defend. Although their gods were false, their worship was sincere, and they carefully kept their oaths to them. By the customs and rights of war, they put defeated enemies to the sword. Yet even when defeated themselves, they shrank from ending their own lives. Although they did not fear death at all, they preferred slavery to suicide. How much more, then, must Christians shrink from this act! They worship the true God and seek citizenship in heaven, even if God’s providence has temporarily handed them over to their enemies to test or correct them.

Certainly, Christians subjected to this humiliation will not be abandoned by the Most High, who humbled himself for their sake. They should also remember that no laws of war or military orders require them to put even a defeated enemy to the sword. If a person may not kill an enemy who has sinned or may yet sin against him, who is so deluded as to maintain that he may kill himself because an enemy has sinned or is going to sin against him?

25. Suicide to Prevent Sin

But, we are told, there is reason to fear that when the body is subjected to an enemy’s lust, the deceptive pleasure of the senses may entice the soul to consent to the sin. Steps must be taken to prevent this disastrous result. Is suicide not the proper way to prevent both the enemy’s sin and the sin of the Christian who is being enticed?

First, a soul led by God and his wisdom rather than by bodily lust will certainly never consent to the desire aroused in its own flesh by another person’s lust. In any event, if suicide is a detestable and damnable wickedness, as the truth plainly declares, who is foolish enough to say, “Let us sin now to prevent a possible future sin. Let us commit murder now, lest we perhaps commit adultery later”?

If wickedness so controls us that innocence is impossible and we can only choose between sins, is a future and uncertain adultery not preferable to a present and certain murder? Is it not better to commit a wickedness that repentance may heal than a crime that leaves no opportunity for healing sorrow? I say this for the sake of those men or women who fear they may be enticed into consenting to their attacker’s lust. They think they should take their own lives to prevent their own sin, rather than another person’s.

But let such shameful consent to the pleasures of the flesh, however they are presented, be far from the mind of a Christian who trusts in God and rests in the hope of his help. Let it be far from such a mind, I say. And if the lustful disobedience that still dwells in our mortal bodies follows its own law regardless of our will, its movements in the body of someone who resists them are surely as blameless as its movements in someone who sleeps.

26. Exceptional Commands from God

But, they say, during persecution some holy women escaped those who threatened to violate them by throwing themselves into rivers they knew would drown them. Having died this way, they are honored as martyrs in the catholic church. I do not presume to speak rashly about such people. I cannot say whether the church may have received divine authority, established by trustworthy evidence, to honor their memory in this way. Perhaps it did. Perhaps these women were prompted to destroy themselves by divine wisdom rather than misled by human judgment.

We know this was the case with Samson. When God commands an act and gives clear evidence that he has commanded it, who will call obedience a crime? Who will condemn such devout submission? Yet not everyone is justified in sacrificing his son to God because Abraham was praised for doing so.

A soldier who kills someone in obedience to the authority under which he lawfully serves is not accused of murder under any law of his state. Indeed, if he does not kill the person, he is accused of treason against the state and contempt for the law. But if he acts on his own authority and impulse, he incurs the crime of shedding human blood. Thus he is punished for doing without orders the very thing he is punished for failing to do when ordered. If a general’s commands make so great a difference, shall God’s commands make none?

Someone who knows it is unlawful to kill himself may nevertheless do so if ordered by the one whose commands we may not disregard. Only let him be absolutely sure that the divine command has been made known. As for us, we can learn the secrets of conscience only as far as they are disclosed to us, and only that far can we judge: “No one knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him” (1 Cor 2:11).

But this we affirm, maintain, and declare in every way to be right: no one ought to inflict voluntary death on himself, for that is to escape the evils of time by plunging into those of eternity. No one ought to do so because of another person’s sins, for that is to escape a guilt that could not contaminate him by incurring great guilt of his own. No one ought to do so because of his own past sins, for he needs this life all the more so that repentance may heal them. No one should end this life to obtain the better life we hope for after death, for those who die by their own hand have no better life after death.

27. Death as an Escape from Sin

One reason for suicide remains, which I mentioned earlier and which some consider sound: preventing oneself from falling into sin through the enticements of pleasure or the violence of pain. If this were a good reason, we should urge people to destroy themselves as soon as they have been washed in the water of regeneration and received forgiveness for all their sins. The time to escape all future sin would be when all past sin had been blotted out. If suicide could lawfully secure this escape, why not at that moment above all?

By this reasoning, why would any baptized person refrain from taking his own life? Why would someone who is freed from this life’s dangers expose himself to them again, when he could so easily free himself from them all, and when it is written, “He who loveth danger shall fall into it” (Sir 3:27)? Why would he love, or at least face, so many serious dangers by remaining in a life he could lawfully leave?

Could anyone be so blinded, morally distorted, and far from the truth as to think a person ought to kill himself for fear that oppression by one man, his master, would lead him into sin, yet ought to go on living and expose himself to this world’s hourly temptations? In this world he faces both all the evils involved in oppression by one master and countless other miseries that life inevitably brings upon us.

By that reasoning, why should we spend time encouraging the baptized to chastity as virgins, sexual abstinence as widows, or fidelity in marriage? We would have a much simpler and shorter way to deliver them from sin. We could persuade those newly baptized to end their lives and pass to their Lord pure and in a good spiritual state. If anyone thinks we should try to persuade them of this, I call him not foolish but mad.

How, then, can he have the nerve to say to anyone, “Kill yourself, lest you add a grievous sin to your small sins while living under an unchaste master who behaves like a barbarian”? How can he say this if he cannot without wickedness say, “Kill yourself now that you have been washed clean of all your sins, lest you fall again into similar or even greater sins while living in a world so powerful to entice you with its unclean pleasures, torment you with its horrible cruelties, and overcome you with its errors and terrors”?

It is wicked to say this; therefore it is wicked to kill oneself. If there could be any just cause for suicide, this would be it. Since even this is not, there is none.

28. Chastity and God’s Judgment

Do not let your life become a burden to you, faithful servants of Christ, though your enemies made sport of your chastity. You have a great and true consolation if you keep a good conscience and know that you did not consent to the sins of those who were allowed to commit sinful violence against you. If you ask why this was allowed, it belongs to the deep providence of the Creator and Governor of the world: “unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out” (Rom 11:33).

Nevertheless, honestly examine your own souls. Have you become unduly proud of your integrity, self-restraint, and chastity? Have you been so eager for the human praise given to these virtues that you envied others who possessed them? For my part, I do not know your hearts, so I make no accusation. I cannot even hear the answers your hearts give when you question them. Yet if they answer that things are as I have suggested they might be, do not wonder that you have lost what could win you human praise while retaining what cannot be displayed to others.

If you did not consent to sin, it was because God added his help to his grace so that the grace would not be lost. Shame before others replaced human glory so that you would not love that glory. But in both experiences even the fainthearted among you have consolation. The one has shown your faithfulness; the other has disciplined you. The one has vindicated you; the other has corrected you.

Other women, when they examine their hearts, answer that they have never been proud of their virtue as virgins, widows, or faithful wives. Instead, they have associated humbly with those of low standing and rejoiced with trembling in these gifts of God. They have never envied anyone else’s holiness and purity. They have risen above human applause, which generally increases with the rarity of the virtue being praised. They have preferred to see their own numbers grow rather than to stand out individually because their numbers were small.

Even these faithful women, I say, must not complain that the barbarians were allowed to violate them so brutally. Nor must they believe that God overlooked their character when he permitted acts that no one commits without punishment. For some of the most outrageous and wicked desires are allowed free rein for now by God’s hidden judgment, while being reserved for his public and final judgment.

Moreover, these Christian women may have had some hidden weakness, even though they are unaware of any undue pride in their virtuous chastity and suffered their captors’ violence without sin on their own part. That weakness might have led them into a proud and contemptuous attitude if they had not suffered this humiliation when the city was taken. Just as some people were removed by death so that wickedness would not change their character, these women were violated so that prosperity would not corrupt their modesty.

Neither the women already proud of remaining virgins nor those who might have become proud if they had escaped the enemy’s violence lost their chastity. Instead, they gained humility. The former were saved from pride they already cherished; the latter from pride that would soon have grown in them.

We must also notice that some of these women may have thought that sexual self-restraint was a bodily good, lasting only as long as the body remained untouched. They did not understand that the purity of both body and soul rests on the steadfastness of the will, strengthened by God’s grace. It cannot be forcibly taken from an unwilling person. They have probably now been freed from this error.

They reflect on how conscientiously they served God and regain their firm conviction that he can never desert those who serve him in this way and call on his help. They also consider how pleasing chastity is to him, something they cannot doubt. They are therefore brought to this conclusion: he could never have allowed these disasters to befall his saints if the disasters could destroy the holiness he himself had given them and delights to see in them.

29. Answering Those Who Mock Christians

The whole family of the most high and most true God therefore has a consolation of its own. This consolation cannot deceive, and it offers a surer hope than the tottering and collapsing affairs of earth can provide. God’s family will not refuse the discipline of this temporary life, in which they are trained for eternal life. Nor will they lament their experience of it. They use earthly goods as pilgrims who are not held back by them, while earthly evils either test or improve them.

Some people mock them in their trials and, when evils befall them, say, “Where is thy God?” (Ps 42:10). We may ask these people where their own gods are when they suffer the very calamities they worship their gods to avoid, or claim that the gods ought to be worshiped to avoid. For Christ’s family has its answer ready:

Our God is present everywhere, wholly present everywhere, and confined to no place. He can be present without being perceived and absent without moving. When he exposes us to adversity, he does so either to test our strengths or to correct our weaknesses. In return for our patient endurance of sufferings in time, he reserves an everlasting reward for us.

But who are you, that we should consider it worth speaking with you even about your own gods, much less about our God, who is “to be feared above all gods? For all the gods of the nations are idols; but the Lord made the heavens” (Ps 96:4-5).

30. Prosperity and Moral Ruin

If the famous Scipio Nasica were alive today, he would curb this shamelessness of yours. He was once your pontiff, and the senate unanimously chose him when, in the panic caused by the Punic War, they sought the best citizen to receive the Phrygian goddess. Perhaps you would scarcely dare to look such a man in the face.

Why do you complain about Christianity in your calamities, unless you want to enjoy your luxurious excesses without restraint and lead a depraved and dissolute life without any anxiety or disaster to interrupt it? Certainly, you do not desire peace, prosperity, and abundance because you intend to use these blessings rightly: with moderation, sobriety, self-control, and piety. Instead, you intend to indulge without restraint in an endless variety of drunken pleasures. In this way you produce from your prosperity a moral plague a thousand times more disastrous than the fiercest enemies.

It was this kind of calamity that Scipio feared when he refused to agree to the destruction of Carthage, Rome’s rival, and opposed Cato, who urged its destruction. Scipio was your chief pontiff and, in the judgment of the whole senate, your best man. He feared security, that enemy of weak minds, and saw that a wholesome fear would be a suitable guardian for the citizens.

He was not mistaken. Events proved how wisely he had spoken. Once Carthage was destroyed and the Roman republic freed from its great source of anxiety, a host of disastrous evils immediately arose from this prosperity. First, harmony was weakened and then destroyed by fierce and bloody uprisings. A chain of destructive causes then led to civil wars. These brought massacres, bloodshed, lawless and cruel proscriptions, and plunder. In the days of their virtue, the Romans had expected injury only from their enemies. Now, having lost their virtue, they suffered greater cruelties at the hands of their fellow citizens.

The desire to rule, which, along with other vices, existed more intensely and without restraint among the Romans than among any other people, took possession of the more powerful few. It then brought the rest, worn out and weary, under its yoke.

31. How the Desire to Rule Grew

For once that desire has lodged in a proud spirit, where will it stop before a succession of advances brings it even to the throne? Nothing but unscrupulous ambition can secure such advances. Yet unscrupulous ambition has nothing to work on except a nation corrupted by greed and luxury. And prosperity makes a people greedy and luxurious.

This was what the very prudent Nasica was trying to prevent when he opposed the destruction of the greatest, strongest, and wealthiest city of Rome’s enemy. He thought that fear would restrain desire. With desire restrained, it would not run wild in luxury; with luxury prevented, greed would come to an end. With these vices banished, virtue would flourish and grow, greatly benefiting the state. Liberty, virtue’s fitting companion, would remain unfettered.

For similar reasons, and moved by the same thoughtful patriotism, this same chief pontiff of yours opposed the senate’s proposal to build a circle of seats around the theater. I still mean the man judged Rome’s best citizen without a single dissenting voice. In a speech of great weight, he warned the senators against allowing the luxurious ways of Greece to undermine Roman manliness. He persuaded them not to yield to the weakening and emasculating influence of foreign licentiousness. His words carried such authority and force that the senate prohibited even the benches that had customarily been brought into the theater for the citizens’ temporary use.

How eagerly such a man would have banished the stage performances themselves from Rome, if he had dared to oppose the authority of those he believed to be gods! He did not know that they were malicious demons. Or, if he did know, he thought they should be appeased rather than despised. For the heavenly teaching had not yet been revealed to the Gentiles: the teaching that would purify their hearts by faith, transform their natural disposition through humble devotion to God, and turn them from serving proud demons to seeking the things in heaven, or even above the heavens.

32. How the Stage Games Began

Those of you who do not know this should learn it, and those who pretend not to know should be reminded of it, while you complain against the one who has freed you from such rulers. The stage games, those displays of shameless folly and licentiousness, were established at Rome by the command of your gods, rather than by people’s vicious cravings. You could far more excusably have given divine honors to Scipio than to gods like these. The gods were less moral than their pontiff.

Now give me your attention, if your mind, drunk from its deep draughts of error, can take in any sober truth. The gods commanded games to be presented in their honor to stop a physical plague. Their pontiff prohibited the construction of a theater to prevent a moral plague. If enough understanding remains in you to prefer the soul to the body, choose whom you will worship.

Besides, although the plague stopped, it did not stop because the sensual madness of stage plays had taken hold of a warlike people previously accustomed only to the circus games. Rather, these cunning and wicked spirits foresaw that the plague would shortly end in its natural course. They seized the opportunity to infect their worshipers’ morals, instead of their bodies, with a far more serious disease.

These gods take great pleasure in this plague. It darkened people’s minds so deeply and disfigured them so shamefully that even quite recently some who fled the sack of Rome and found refuge in Carthage were still infected with it. Will future generations be able to believe this? Day after day, these refugees seemed to compete with one another over who could pursue the actors in the theaters most madly.

33. Rome’s Fall Has Not Cured Its Vices

You deluded men! What is this blindness, or rather madness, that possesses you? We hear that even the eastern nations are mourning your ruin, while powerful states in the most distant parts of the earth mourn your fall as a public calamity. How can you yourselves be crowding into the theaters, pouring into them and filling them, and, in short, behaving more madly than ever before?

This was the foul plague, this the destruction of virtue and honor, from which Scipio sought to protect you when he prohibited the construction of theaters. This was why he wanted you still to have an enemy to fear. He saw how easily prosperity would corrupt and destroy you. He did not consider a republic flourishing when its walls stood but its morals lay in ruins.

Yet the enticements of malicious demons had more influence with you than the precautions of prudent men. So you refuse to be held responsible for the injuries you inflict, while blaming Christianity for the injuries you suffer. Corrupted by good fortune and not disciplined by adversity, you desire the restoration of a peaceful and secure state so that you can indulge your vicious luxury without punishment, rather than for the peace of the commonwealth.

Scipio wanted an enemy to press you hard so that you would not give yourselves over to luxurious ways. But you are so depraved that even being crushed by the enemy does not restrain your luxury. You have wasted the benefit your calamity could have brought. You have become utterly miserable and remained utterly dissolute.

34. God’s Mercy amid Rome’s Ruin

That you are still alive is due to God. He spares you so that you may be urged to repent and reform your lives. Ungrateful though you are, he has allowed you to escape the enemy’s sword by calling yourselves his servants or finding refuge in the sacred places of the martyrs.

It is said that Romulus and Remus, to increase the population of the city they founded, opened a sanctuary where every man could find refuge and absolution from every crime. This remarkably foreshadowed what has recently happened in honor of Christ. Rome’s destroyers followed the example of its founders. But it did not bring the founders much credit that, to increase the number of their citizens, they did what the destroyers have done to keep the number of their enemies from being diminished.

35. The Two Cities Intermingled

Let the redeemed family of the Lord Christ, the pilgrim city of King Christ, give their enemies these and similar answers, including any fuller and more fitting answers they can find. But let this city remember that among her enemies are hidden those destined to become her fellow citizens. Then she will not consider it fruitless to endure what they inflict as enemies until they become confessors of the faith.

Likewise, as long as she lives as a stranger in the world, the city of God has within her communion some who are bound to her by the sacraments but will not share eternally in the inheritance of the saints. Some of these are not yet recognized. Others reveal themselves and do not hesitate to join our enemies in complaining against God, whose sacramental badge they wear. Today you may see these people thronging the churches with us; tomorrow, crowding the theaters with the godless.

But we have less reason to despair of reclaiming even such people if, among our most open enemies, there are now some who, unknown to themselves, are destined to become our friends. In truth, these two cities are entangled and intermingled in this world until the last judgment separates them. With God’s help, I now proceed to speak of their rise, progress, and end. What I write, I write for the glory of the city of God, so that, when compared with the other city, she may shine more brightly.

36. The Argument Still Ahead

But I still have things to say against those who blame our religion for the disasters of the Roman republic because it prohibits sacrifices to the gods. For this purpose I must recount all the disasters, or as many as seem sufficient, that befell that city and its subject provinces before these sacrifices were prohibited. They would undoubtedly have blamed us for all these disasters if, at that time, our religion had shed its light upon them and prohibited their sacrifices.

I must then go on to show what well-being in their common life the true God, in whose hand are all kingdoms, was pleased to grant them so that their empire might grow. I must show why he did so, and how their false gods, instead of helping them at all, greatly harmed them through trickery and deceit.

Finally, I must answer those who, once convinced and refuted on this point by unanswerable proofs, try to maintain that they worship the gods for benefits to be enjoyed after death, rather than in hope of the present advantages of this life. Unless I am mistaken, this will be the most difficult part of my task and will deserve argument of the highest order.

For we must then contend with the philosophers, and not merely the ordinary crowd of philosophers, but the most renowned. They agree with us on many points, including the immortality of the soul, that the true God created the world, and that by his providence he rules everything he has created. But because they differ from us on other points, we must not shrink from exposing their errors. Having refuted the objections of the wicked with whatever ability God may grant, we may then uphold the city of God, true piety, and the worship of God, to which alone the promise of true and everlasting happiness is attached.

Let us end here, then, so that we may take up these subjects in a new book.