The City of God: Volume 1

Preface: His purpose in writing this work

The glorious city of God is my subject in this work, which you, my dearest son Marcellinus, first proposed and to which I am bound by my promise. I have taken up its defense against those who prefer their own gods to the Founder of this city, a city of surpassing glory whether we see it as it still lives by faith through this fleeting passage of time, dwelling as a stranger among the ungodly, or as it will one day rest in the settled permanence of its eternal home, which it now awaits with patience, looking forward to the day when "righteousness shall return unto judgment" and it receives, through the excellence of its nature, final victory and perfect peace. This is a great and demanding undertaking, but God is my helper. I am well aware of what it takes to persuade the proud of how great a virtue humility truly is: the kind that lifts us not through merely human arrogance, but through divine grace, above all the earthly dignities that wobble and shift on this unstable stage. The King and Founder of this city has spoken plainly to His people in Scripture, giving them this principle of divine law: "God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble." Yet this, which is God's own prerogative, is precisely what the swollen ambition of a proud spirit also reaches for and loves to claim as its own attribute, to

"Show pity to the humbled soul,
And crush the sons of pride."

As the plan of this work requires, and as occasion demands, we must also speak of the earthly city, which, though it rules over nations, is itself ruled by its own lust for power.

Chapter 1: On the enemies of Christ's name whom the barbarians spared, for Christ's sake, when they sacked the city

This earthly city is home to the very enemies against whom I must defend the city of God. Many of them, it is true, have been rescued from their ungodly errors and have become respectable citizens of that heavenly city. But many others burn with such hatred toward it, and are so ungrateful to its Redeemer for His extraordinary kindness, that they have forgotten a simple fact: they would not be able to utter a single word against it had they not found refuge in its sacred places, sheltering from enemy swords, and thereby saved the very lives they now boast about. Are not these same Romans, spared by the barbarians out of respect for Christ, now enemies of Christ's name? The shrines of the martyrs and the churches of the apostles testify to this. During the sack of the city, those places stood open as sanctuaries for everyone who fled to them, Christian and pagan alike. The bloodthirsty enemy raged right up to their thresholds and no further; at those doorways, his murderous fury found its limit. Soldiers who had shown any trace of mercy brought their prisoners there, fearing that someone less compassionate might fall upon them. Even those killers who had shown no pity anywhere else found their rage for slaughter bridled and their appetite for captives extinguished the moment they entered those sacred spaces, where the freedoms of war were simply not permitted.

In this way, multitudes escaped who now mock the Christian faith and blame Christ for every misfortune that has befallen their city. Yet the preservation of their own lives, a gift they owe entirely to the barbarians' reverence for Christ, they credit not to Christ but to their own good fortune. If they had any honest perception of things, they would instead attribute the hardships and cruelties inflicted by their enemies to divine providence, which has always used suffering to correct the corrupt behavior of humanity, and which tests the righteous and the praiseworthy with similar trials, either bringing them through to a better world once the trial is complete, or keeping them here on earth for purposes not yet revealed. They should also credit the spirit of these Christian times for the fact that, contrary to every custom of war, those bloodthirsty barbarians spared them at all, and spared them specifically for Christ's sake, whether that mercy was shown in ordinary places or in those places set apart for Christ's name, the largest of which were deliberately chosen as sanctuaries so that the widest possible compassion could be extended and the greatest number of people could find shelter there.

They should therefore give thanks to God and, with genuine confession, take refuge in His name, so that they might escape the punishment of eternal fire. These are people who took Christ's name on their lying lips simply to escape destruction in the present moment. Among those you now see brazenly and shamelessly insulting the servants of Christ, there are many who would never have escaped that slaughter had they not pretended to be Christ's servants themselves. Yet now, in ungrateful arrogance and utterly reckless impiety, at the risk of punishment in everlasting darkness, they turn against the very name that gave them fraudulent cover when all they wanted was to go on enjoying this brief and passing life.

Chapter 2: How sparing the conquered for the sake of their gods runs entirely against the customs of war

The histories of countless wars, both before Rome was built and after it rose to power and extended its dominion, are available for anyone to read. Let someone cite a single example in which, after a city was taken by foreign forces, the victors spared those who had fled to the temples of their gods for sanctuary. Let someone find one case in which a barbarian general ordered that no one found in a particular temple should be put to the sword. Did Aeneas not witness

"Dying Priam at the shrine,
Staining the hearth he made divine?"

Did Diomede and Ulysses not

"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?"

Nor is what follows actually true: that

"Thenceforth the tide of fortune changed,
And Greece grew weak."

After this, the Greeks conquered Troy and burned it to the ground. After this, they cut off Priam's head as he fled to the altars. Troy did not fall because it lost Minerva. Consider what Minerva herself had already lost before she could perish. Her guards, perhaps? Yes, precisely her guards. The moment they were killed, she could be stolen. It was not the men who were protected by the image; it was the image that depended on the men for its protection. How, then, was she supposed to defend the city and its people when she could not even defend those who defended her?

Chapter 3: How the Romans failed to show their usual wisdom when they trusted that they would be helped by the gods who had been unable to defend Troy

These, then, were the gods to whose protection the Romans were so pleased to entrust their city. What a pitiful mistake. And they grow angry with us for saying so, even though they never grow angry with their own writers for saying the same things. In fact, they pay money to be taught what those writers say, and the teachers of such authors are considered worthy of public salaries and other honors. Take Virgil, who is read by schoolboys precisely so that this great poet, the most celebrated and admired of all poets, might shape their impressionable young minds and leave a lasting impression, as Horace put it: "The fresh cask long keeps its first tang."

Well, in Virgil, Juno is portrayed as hostile to the Trojans, stirring up Æolus, 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 wise men really have entrusted the defense of Rome to gods who had already been conquered? Someone might object that this was only Juno speaking, and that she, like an angry woman, didn't know what she was saying. Very well. But what does Æneas himself say, the same Æneas so often called "pious"? Does he not say:

"Lo! Panthus, escaped from death by flight,
Priest of Apollo on the height,
His conquered gods with trembling hands
He bears, and shelter swift demands?"

Isn't it obvious that these gods, whom Æneas doesn't hesitate to call "conquered," were entrusted to him rather than he to them, when he is told:

"The gods of her domestic shrines
Your country to your care consigns?"

If Virgil himself says that these gods were defeated, and that even after their defeat they could only escape under a man's protection, then what kind of madness leads anyone to believe that Rome was wisely entrusted to such guardians, or that the city could not have fallen while they still watched over it? To worship conquered gods as protectors and champions is not to honor good divinities; it is to embrace evil omens. Wouldn't it be far more reasonable to conclude, not that Rome would never have fallen if only these gods had survived, but rather that the gods themselves would have perished long ago had Rome not preserved them as long as she could? Anyone who thinks this through clearly will see the absurdity of the claim that Rome could not be conquered while defended by gods who were themselves already conquered, and that the city only fell because it had lost its divine protectors. The truth is precisely the opposite: Rome fell because it chose as its protectors gods who were already doomed. When the poets composed and sang these stories about defeated gods, they were not inventing fictions. They were honest men, and the truth forced their hand. This point will be examined carefully and at length in a more appropriate place later on. For now, let me explain as briefly and clearly as I can what I intended to say about these ungrateful men who blasphemously blame Christ for the calamities they have brought on themselves through their own wickedness, while taking no notice whatsoever of the mercy shown to them for Christ's sake despite that same wickedness. In their reckless and blasphemous arrogance, they turn against His name the very lips they used to falsely claim that name in order to save their lives. Inside the places consecrated to Christ, where no enemy would harm them for His sake, they held their tongues and accepted the safety and shelter He provided. But the moment they stepped outside those sanctuaries, they let those same tongues loose in bitter curses against Him.

Chapter 4: The asylum of Juno in Troy, which saved no one from the Greeks; and the churches of the Apostles, which protected all who fled to them from the barbarians

Troy itself, the mother of the Roman people, could not protect its own citizens in the sacred places of their gods from the fire and sword of the Greeks, even though the Greeks worshipped those same gods. As I have already noted, this protection simply did not come. And beyond that failure, Virgil continues:

"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."

For that matter, Caesar himself, when describing the sack of a city, wrote in terms that leave no room for doubt about what conquerors typically do. Compare, then, this so-called "asylum," which belonged not to some minor deity or obscure member of the divine hierarchy, but to Juno herself, the sister and wife of Jupiter and queen of all the gods, with the churches built in memory of the apostles. Into Juno's temple were gathered the spoils rescued from burning temples and seized from the gods, not to be returned to the defeated, but divided among the victors. Into the Christian churches, by contrast, everything belonging to them was carefully and reverently returned, even when found far from its original place. In Juno's temple, liberty was destroyed; in the churches, it was preserved. In Juno's temple, captivity was absolute; in the churches, it was absolutely forbidden. Men were driven into that pagan temple to become the property of their conquerors, who now lorded it over them. Men were led into these Christian churches by their relenting enemies, so that they might go free. To put it plainly: the civilized Greeks turned Juno's temple to their own greed and arrogance, while even the savage barbarians chose the churches of Christ as fitting places for humility and mercy. Perhaps one might object that the Greeks, in their victory, spared the temples of gods they shared with the Trojans, and did not dare to cut down or enslave the wretched, defeated Trojans who fled there for refuge. Perhaps Virgil, as poets do, depicted something that never actually happened. But there is no question that he was depicting the standard behavior of a conquering enemy in a captured city.

Chapter 5: Caesar's statement regarding the universal custom of an enemy when sacking a city

Why do I bring this up? Because even Caesar himself provides direct testimony about this practice. In his speech to the senate regarding the conspirators, he said (as Sallust, a historian of remarkable reliability, records) "that virgins and boys are violated, children torn from the embrace of their parents, matrons subjected to whatever the conquerors desire, temples and houses plundered, slaughter and burning everywhere; in short, all things filled with arms, corpses, blood, and wailing." Had he not mentioned temples here, we might assume that enemies typically spared the dwellings of the gods. And the Roman temples faced these very dangers not from foreign enemies, but from Catiline and his associates, men who were among Rome's most distinguished senators and citizens. But these, someone might object, were depraved men, traitors to their own country.

Chapter 6: How not even the Romans, when they took cities, spared the conquered who fled to their temples

Why, then, should our argument bother with the many nations that waged wars against one another and nowhere spared the conquered even in the temples of their gods? Let us look instead at the Romans themselves. Let us recall and examine the Romans, whose greatest boast was "to spare the vanquished and subdue the proud," and who prided themselves on forgiving injuries rather than avenging them. Among the many great cities they stormed, captured, and destroyed in the course of building their empire, can anyone tell us which temples they regularly exempted, so that whoever took refuge in them was safe? Or did they actually do this, and the historians simply left it out? Are we really to believe that men who searched with the greatest eagerness for anything worth praising would pass over what they themselves would have considered the most striking proof of Roman piety? Marcus Marcellus, a celebrated Roman general who captured the magnificently adorned city of Syracuse, is said to have wept over its coming destruction and shed his own tears before any blood was spilled. He even took steps to protect the dignity of his enemies. Before ordering the assault on the city, he issued an edict forbidding the violation of any free person. Yet the city was sacked in the usual manner of war, and nowhere do we read that even this restrained and humane commander gave orders that anyone who had fled to a particular temple should be left unharmed.

All of this would certainly never have been left out of the historical record, given that neither the general's weeping nor his edict protecting chastity was passed over in silence. Fabius, the conqueror of Tarentum, is praised for refusing to plunder the city's statues. When his secretary asked what should be done with the large number of captured divine images, Fabius cloaked his restraint in humor. He asked what kind of statues they were, and when told there were many large ones, some of them armed, he replied: "Let us leave the Tarentines their angry gods." So then, if Roman historians could not pass over in silence the weeping of one general or the laughter of another, the chaste compassion of one or the witty restraint of the other, on what occasion would they have failed to record it if any commander had shown this particular form of mercy toward an enemy's gods, by forbidding slaughter or captivity within any temple?

Chapter 7: Why the cruelties of the sack of Rome followed the custom of war, while the acts of mercy came from the influence of Christ's name

Everything Rome suffered in that recent catastrophe, all the killing, looting, burning, and misery, followed the normal patterns of war. What was unprecedented, however, was that savage barbarians conducted themselves with such unexpected restraint. The largest churches were deliberately chosen and set aside as sanctuaries, filled with people who had been granted mercy. Inside those walls, no one was killed; no one was dragged out by force. Many were actually led there by enemies who had relented, and released to freedom. None were hauled away into slavery by merciless captors. Anyone who fails to see that this should be credited to the name of Christ and to the influence of Christian faith is simply blind. Anyone who sees it and offers no praise is ungrateful. And anyone who tries to stop others from praising it is out of their mind. No reasonable person should attribute this mercy to the barbarians themselves. Their violent and bloodthirsty instincts were checked, restrained, and remarkably softened by Him who had spoken through His prophet long before: "I will punish their sins with a rod, and their wrongs with blows; yet I will not withdraw my loving-kindness from them entirely" (Ps 89:32-33).

Chapter 8: On the blessings and hardships that often fall on good and wicked people alike

Someone might ask: why did God's compassion extend even to the ungodly and ungrateful? The answer is simply that this is the nature of His mercy, since He daily "makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." Some people, when they reflect on this, repent of their wickedness and change their ways. Others, however, 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 2:4-6). Yet even so, God's patience continues to invite the wicked toward repentance, just as God's discipline trains the righteous in patience. In the same way, God's mercy embraces the good to nurture them, while God's severity overtakes the wicked to punish them. Divine providence has determined that in the world to come, good things will be prepared for the righteous that the wicked will never enjoy, and evil things will await the wicked that the good will never suffer. But the good and ill things of this present life God has willed to be shared by both, so that we would not chase too eagerly after the things that wicked people are seen to enjoy just as much as we do, nor recoil in unworthy fear from the hardships that even good people so often endure.

There is also a profound difference in the purpose served by what we call adversity and what we call prosperity. The good person is neither lifted up by life's blessings nor crushed by its hardships; but the wicked person, having been corrupted by worldly happiness, experiences its misfortunes as punishment. Yet even now, in the way temporal things are distributed, God makes His involvement plainly visible. If every sin were met with immediate, obvious punishment, nothing would appear to be held in reserve for the final judgment; but if no sin ever received a clearly divine consequence, people would conclude that divine providence doesn't exist at all. The same logic applies to life's good things: if God did not visibly bestow them on at least some of those who ask, we would say these blessings were not His to give; and if He gave them to everyone who sought them, we would assume they were the only rewards of serving Him, which would make us not devout, but merely greedy and self-interested. So while good and bad people often suffer alike, we shouldn't conclude that there's no difference between them simply because what they suffer looks the same. Even within that shared suffering, the people enduring it remain fundamentally unlike each other; and though they face the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. The same fire makes gold shine brilliantly while reducing chaff to smoke; the same threshing floor beats straw into dust while cleaning the grain; and the oil and the dregs are not the same, even though the same press squeezes them both. In the same way, the same affliction tests, purifies, and refines the good, while it condemns, destroys, and finishes the wicked. This is why, under identical suffering, the wicked curse God and blaspheme, while the good pray and give thanks. What matters enormously is not what hardships are endured, but what kind of person endures them. Stirred by the same motion, mud gives off a horrible stench, while perfume releases a sweet fragrance.

Chapter 9: On the reasons for correcting the bad and the good together

What, then, did Christians actually suffer during that catastrophic period that wouldn't benefit anyone who thought carefully and honestly about the following circumstances? First, they must humbly acknowledge the very sins that provoked God to fill the world with such terrible disasters. Even if they were far removed from the excesses of wicked, immoral, and godless people, they couldn't honestly claim to be so free of fault that they deserved to escape even these temporary sufferings. Every person, however admirably they live, still gives in to the desires of the flesh at some point. Even if someone never falls into gross wickedness, shameless depravity, or outright impiety, they still slip into smaller sins, either occasionally or, more often, precisely because those sins seem too minor to worry about. But setting that aside, where do we easily find someone who holds in proper, honest regard those people whose revolting pride, indulgence, greed, and cursed wickedness have moved God to strike the earth, just as He warned He would? Where is the person who lives among them the way we are actually called to live? Too often, we deliberately blind ourselves to opportunities for teaching, warning, or even rebuking them, either because we dread the effort, fear offending them, or worry about losing valuable friendships that might help our careers or protect our worldly interests, which our greed wants to gain or our weakness fears to lose. So while the good find the behavior of the wicked genuinely repugnant, and therefore won't share in the eternal damnation that awaits such people, they still spare those damnable sins out of fear, and for that reason, even their own minor and forgivable sins make them justly subject to punishment alongside the wicked in this life, even though they will escape punishment entirely in eternity. It is entirely just that when God afflicts them together with the wicked, they find this life bitter, since their love for its sweetness was precisely what kept them from being hard on those sinners when they should have been.

When someone refrains from rebuking those who are doing wrong because he's waiting for a better moment, or because he fears his criticism will only harden them, or because he worries that weaker believers might be discouraged from pursuing a godly life and driven away from the faith, that silence seems to come not from self-interest but from genuine care. What is blameworthy, however, is something different: when people who have themselves turned away from wicked behavior and live in an entirely different manner still overlook faults in others that they should be confronting and correcting. They stay silent because they fear giving offense, and because they don't want to jeopardize their standing with people whose company gives them access to things that good people may legitimately enjoy, though they cling to those things far more tightly than is fitting for those who consider themselves strangers in this world and claim to hope for a heavenly home. Consider the weaker believers: those who are married, who have children or want them, who own homes and households, the very people the apostle addresses in his letters to the churches, instructing wives and husbands in how to treat one another, children and parents in their mutual duties, servants and masters in theirs. These people gladly acquire earthly and temporal goods and bitterly resent losing them, which is precisely why they don't dare offend those whose corrupt and wicked lives deeply trouble them. But it's not only these weaker believers who fall into this pattern. Even those who live at a higher level, who are free from the entanglements of marriage and get by on simple food and clothing, often think carefully about their own safety and reputation, and hold back from criticizing the wicked out of fear of their schemes and violence. They may not fear them enough to actually join in their wrongdoing, and no threat or act of force could bring them to that point; yet the very sins they refuse to participate in, they often also refuse to condemn, even when speaking up might actually prevent those sins from happening. They stay silent because they're afraid that if their rebuke fails, their safety or reputation will suffer. Their concern isn't that their good standing is worth preserving so they can continue to help those who need their guidance; it's simply that they enjoy being liked and respected, that they fear public opinion, and that they dread physical pain or death. In other words, their silence comes from selfishness, not love.

These considerations point to what I believe is one of the main reasons why the righteous suffer alongside the wicked when God chooses to visit a corrupt society with temporal punishment. They are punished together not because they have lived equally corrupt lives, but because the good, like the wicked (though not to the same degree), have grown too attached to this present life. They should hold it loosely instead, so that the wicked, warned and reformed by their example, might reach out for eternal life. And if the wicked refuse to join the good in pursuing everlasting life, they should still be loved as enemies and treated with patience, because as long as they live, there remains the possibility that they may yet change. Those who cling selfishly to this world have far 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." Watchmen and overseers are appointed in the churches precisely so that they will rebuke sin without hesitation. Nor is a person innocent of this same failure simply because he holds no official position, if he sees wrongdoing in the lives of those around him and says nothing, afraid of causing offense or losing the worldly comforts he desires legitimately but pursues too greedily. Finally, there is yet another reason why the good are afflicted with temporal suffering, and Job's story illustrates it clearly: the human spirit must be tested, so that it becomes evident with what steadfast, devoted trust, and with how selfless a love, it holds fast to God.

Chapter 10: Why the saints lose nothing in losing temporal goods

These are the considerations one must keep in mind when answering the question of whether anything truly harmful can happen to the faithful and godly, or whether every hardship can ultimately be turned to their benefit. Or should we say the question is unnecessary, and that the apostle is speaking empty words when he writes, "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God" (Rom 8:28)?

They lost everything they had. But did they lose their faith? Their godliness? The inner qualities of the hidden person of the heart, which in God's sight are of great worth? Did they lose those? Because these are the true wealth of Christians, and it was to people like them that the apostle, himself rich in what truly matters, wrote: "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 clothing, let us be content with that. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and a trap, and into many foolish and harmful desires, which pull people down into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evil; and while some have chased after it, they have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows" (1 Tim 6:6-10).

Those who lost everything in the sack of Rome, if they had held their possessions in the spirit the apostle taught, being outwardly poor but inwardly rich, that is, using the world without being consumed by it, could have spoken the words of Job, severely tested but never broken: "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there: the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so has it come to pass: blessed be the name of the Lord." Like a faithful servant, Job regarded his Lord's will as his greatest possession, and his obedience to that will was what truly enriched his soul. It did not grieve him to lose in life what he would have had to surrender at death anyway. But consider those weaker souls who, while they cannot be said to have preferred earthly wealth to Christ, still clung to it with an excessive attachment. They discovered through the pain of losing it just how deeply they had sinned in loving it. Their grief was of their own making; as the apostle says, "they have pierced themselves through with many sorrows." It was fitting that those who had ignored so many verbal warnings should finally learn through experience. When the apostle says, "They that will be rich fall into temptation," and so on, what he condemns is not the possession of wealth but the craving for it. 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 gives us richly all things to enjoy; that they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to share; laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life." Those who used their wealth in this way were consoled for small losses by great gains, and found more genuine pleasure in the possessions they had safely stored away by giving them freely than sorrow over those they lost through anxious and selfish hoarding. Nothing could perish on earth except what they would have been ashamed to carry away from earth in the first place. Our Lord's instruction is clear: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Those who heeded this instruction proved, in the hour of tribulation, how wisely they had acted in not dismissing so trustworthy a teacher and so faithful and powerful a guardian of their treasure. If many were relieved to find their treasure stored in places the enemy happened not to discover, how much more secure was the joy of those who, following God's own counsel, had moved their treasure to a stronghold no enemy can ever reach. Consider our Paulinus, bishop of Nola, who voluntarily gave up vast wealth and became entirely poor, though abundantly rich in holiness. When the barbarians sacked Nola and took him prisoner, he would 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 exactly where he had been taught to hide and store it by the One who had also foretold that these very calamities would come upon the world. Those who obeyed their Lord's warning about where and how to store their treasure did not truly lose even their earthly possessions when the barbarians invaded. And those who now regret their disobedience have at least learned the right use of earthly goods, if not through the wisdom that would have prevented their loss, then through the hard experience that followed it.

But some good Christian men were subjected to torture so that the enemy could force them to hand over their possessions. What they could not surrender or lose, however, was the very goodness that made them good. If, on the other hand, they chose to endure torture rather than give up their ill-gotten wealth, then I would argue they were not truly good men at all. They needed to be reminded that if they could suffer so severely for the sake of money, they should be willing to endure any torment for Christ's sake. They needed to learn to love the One who rewards all who suffer for Him with eternal life, rather than clinging to silver and gold, for which it was simply pitiable to suffer, whether they protected it through lying or lost it by telling the truth. Under torture, no one lost Christ by confessing Him, and no one preserved wealth except by denying it existed. It is even possible that the torture itself was more beneficial than the possessions ever were, since it taught them to set their hearts on something that could never be taken away, while those possessions had done nothing but trouble and torment their anxious owners without any real benefit.

But then we are reminded that some were tortured who had no wealth to surrender and were not believed when they said so. Even these people, however, may have harbored a longing for wealth and were not genuinely at peace with a holy, willing poverty. For them, it had to be made clear that not only the actual possession of wealth, but even the desire for it, deserved such agonizing consequences. And even if they truly had no hidden stores of gold or silver because they were living in hope of a better life, I cannot say for certain whether anyone in that condition was tortured on the assumption that he had wealth. But if so, then in confessing under questioning that he lived in holy poverty, he was in effect confessing Christ. And though it was hardly reasonable to expect the barbarians to believe him, no confessor of holy poverty could be put to torture without receiving a heavenly reward.

Again, they point out that a prolonged famine brought many Christians to their knees. But even this, the faithful turned to good use through patient endurance. Those whom famine killed outright were rescued from the sufferings of this life, just as a merciful illness might have done; and those who merely went hungry were taught to live more frugally and were trained to endure longer periods without food.

Chapter 11: On the end of this life, and whether it matters that death comes sooner or later

But then they add that many Christians were slaughtered, put to death in a hideous variety of cruel ways. If this is hard to accept, it is assuredly the common lot of everyone born into this life. Of one thing, at least, I am certain: no one has ever died who was not destined to die at some point. The end of life places the longest life on equal footing with the shortest, because two things that have both ceased to exist cannot be ranked as better or worse, greater or lesser, simply based on how long they lasted. And what does it really matter what kind of death brings life to a close, since the person who has died once is not forced to endure the same ordeal a second time? As it is, the daily hazards of life threaten every person with countless possible deaths for as long as it remains uncertain which one will actually claim them. I ask, then, whether it is not better to suffer one death and be done with it, than to live in fear of all of them? I am not unaware of the timid, weak-spirited fear that leads people to prefer a long life shadowed by dread over dying once and escaping all those fears together. But that kind of cowardly shrinking of the flesh is one thing, and the calm, well-reasoned conviction of the soul is quite another. A death that ends a good life should not be judged an evil; death becomes evil only through the judgment that follows it. Those who are destined to die, then, need not trouble themselves asking what kind of death they will face, but rather what destination death will carry them to. And since Christians know full well that the death of the godly beggar whose sores the dogs licked was far better than the death of the wicked rich man who lay clothed in purple and fine linen, what real harm could even the most terrible deaths do to those who had lived well?

Chapter 12: On the burial of the dead: why denying it to Christians does them no harm

We are also reminded that in such a massive slaughter, many bodies could not even be buried. But genuine faith is not shaken by so grim a circumstance. The faithful remember the assurance that not a hair of their head will perish, and that therefore, even if their bodies are devoured by beasts, their blessed resurrection will not be prevented. The Truth would never have said, "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul" (Matt 10:28), if anything an enemy could do to the body of the slain could actually harm the person's future life. Or will someone perhaps take so absurd a position as to argue that those who kill the body are not to be feared before death, lest they kill it, but are to be feared after death, lest they deprive it of burial? If that were true, then 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 it would seem they can still do great injury to the dead body. But we must never suppose that the Truth can be false. Those who kill the body are said "to do something" because the death blow is felt while the body still has sensation; but after that, they have nothing more they can do, since the slain body feels nothing. So while many bodies of Christians do lie unburied, no one has separated them from heaven, nor from that earth which is everywhere filled with the presence of Him who knows exactly where to find what He created when the time comes to raise it again. 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 were written to expose the cruelty of those who committed such acts, not to describe the misery of those who suffered them. To human eyes this appears a harsh and sorrowful fate, yet "precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints" (Ps 116:15).

All these final rites and ceremonies for the dead, the careful funeral arrangements, the prepared tomb, the elaborate processions, these are comforts for the living, not the dead. A lavish burial does nothing to help a wicked man, just as a poor burial, or none at all, does nothing to harm the godly. The rich man dressed in purple had a magnificent funeral, impressive by human standards; but in God's sight, the far grander funeral was the one given to the ulcerous beggar at the hands of angels, who carried him not to a marble tomb but up to Abraham's bosom.

The men against whom I have undertaken to defend the city of God will laugh at all of this. But even their own philosophers have dismissed the importance of a proper burial, and whole armies have fought and died for their earthly country without giving a second thought to whether their bodies would be left exposed on the battlefield or devoured by wild beasts. Poetry has captured this noble indifference to burial well: "He who has no tomb has the sky for his vault." How much less, then, should these men mock the unburied bodies of Christians, to whom it has been promised that the flesh itself will be restored and the body formed anew, with every member gathered not only from the earth but from the most hidden depths of whatever element has received the remains of the dead.

Chapter 13: Reasons for burying the bodies of the saints

Nevertheless, the bodies of the dead should not be treated with contempt or left unburied, least of all the bodies of the righteous and faithful, whose bodies the Holy Spirit used as His instruments for every good work. Consider how precious a father's clothing, his ring, or anything he wore can be to his children, simply because of the love they had for him. How much more, then, should we care for the bodies of those we love, bodies they inhabited far more closely and intimately than any garment ever could? The body is not some external accessory or tool; it is a genuine part of human nature itself. This is why the righteous people of ancient times were given proper burial rites, why tombs were prepared for them and funeral ceremonies observed. While still alive, they gave their sons instructions about their burial, and sometimes even about moving their remains to a place they had loved. Tobit, as the angel's testimony confirms, is praised and said to have pleased God precisely because he buried the dead. Our Lord Himself, though He was to rise again on the third day, praised the devout woman who poured precious ointment over His body and commended her act to our admiration, saying she had done it in preparation for His burial. The Gospel also speaks approvingly of those who took care to bring His body down from the cross, wrapped it tenderly in costly burial cloths, and saw to its proper interment. None of this proves that corpses have any feeling, but it does show that God's providence reaches even to the bodies of the dead, and that such acts of devotion please Him because they express and strengthen faith in the resurrection. We can also draw from these examples a practical lesson: if God does not overlook even the smallest kindness shown to the unconscious dead, how much more will He reward the charity we extend to the living. Some of what the holy patriarchs said about the burial and removal of their bodies was meant to be understood in a prophetic sense, but there is no need to explore that at length here, since what has already been said is enough. Now, if the lack of basic necessities for the living, such as food and clothing, however painful and difficult, does not destroy the courage and moral endurance of good people or root out their faith, but instead makes it more fruitful, then how much less can the absence of a funeral or the usual attentions paid to the dead bring any misery to those who are already resting in the hidden dwelling places of the blessed? Therefore, even though the bodies of Christians who died during the sack of Rome and other cities were denied these final rites, this is not the fault of the living, who were simply unable to provide them, nor is it any injury to the dead, who can no longer feel the loss.

Chapter 14: On the captivity of the saints, and that divine consolation never failed them there

But, they say, many Christians were even led away as captives. This would indeed be a most pitiable fate, if they could be taken to any place where they could not find their God. Yet sacred Scripture offers great consolation for this calamity as well. The three young men were captives; Daniel was a captive; so were other prophets. And God, the great comforter, did not abandon them. In the same way, He has not abandoned His own people under the power of a nation that, however barbarous, is still human. This is the same God who did not forsake the prophet in the belly of a sea creature. Our opponents, of course, prefer to mock these accounts rather than believe them, even while they accept what they read in their own literature: that Arion of Methymna, the celebrated lyrist, when thrown overboard, was caught on a dolphin's back and carried safely to shore. But our account of the prophet Jonah is far more extraordinary than that story, more extraordinary precisely because it is more remarkable, and more remarkable because it reveals a far greater display of divine power.

Chapter 15: On Regulus, in whom we have an example of the voluntary endurance of captivity for the sake of religion; which yet did not profit him, though he was a worshipper of the gods

But among their own celebrated figures, the Romans have a striking example of someone who voluntarily endured captivity out of religious obligation. Marcus Attilius Regulus, a Roman general, had been taken prisoner by the Carthaginians. The Carthaginians were more eager to arrange a prisoner exchange with Rome than to hold him indefinitely, so they sent Regulus as a special envoy alongside their own ambassadors to negotiate the exchange, first binding him with an oath that if he failed to secure their desired outcome, he would return to Carthage. He went, and persuaded the Roman senate to take the opposite course, because he believed a prisoner exchange was not in the best interest of the republic. Having made his case, the Romans did not force him to return to the enemy; but he voluntarily honored what he had sworn. The Carthaginians then put him to death through refined, elaborate, and horrifying torture. They confined him in a narrow box fitted all around with finely sharpened nails, so that he was forced to stand and could not lean in any direction without suffering intense pain; and in this way they killed him by denying him sleep. People rightly admire the virtue that rose above so terrible a fate. Yet the gods he swore by are the very ones now believed to be avenging the suppression of their worship by inflicting the present calamities on humanity. If these gods, worshipped specifically so that they might secure happiness in this life, either willed or permitted such punishments to fall on a man who kept his oath to them, what worse punishment could they possibly have inflicted in their anger on someone who broke his oath? But why should I not draw two conclusions from this reasoning at once? Regulus clearly held the gods in such reverence that for the sake of his oath he would neither stay in his homeland nor go elsewhere, but returned without hesitation to his most bitter enemies. If he believed this course would benefit him in his present life, he was gravely mistaken, for it brought his life to a horrifying end. By his own example, he demonstrated that the gods do not secure the earthly happiness of those who worship them, since he himself, devoted to their worship, was both defeated in battle and taken prisoner, and then, because he refused to violate the oath he had sworn by them, was tortured and killed by a form of punishment that was new, previously unheard of, and utterly appalling. Now, if the worshippers of the gods are rewarded with happiness in the life to come, why do these critics slander Christianity? Why do they insist that disaster has fallen on Rome because it abandoned its gods, when a city might worship those gods as faithfully as possible and still suffer as Regulus did? Or will someone carry such remarkable blindness so far as to argue, against all evident truth, that while one man might suffer misfortune despite worshipping the gods, an entire city could not? The implication would be that the gods are better at protecting crowds than individuals, as though a crowd were not simply made up of individuals.

But if they claim that Regulus, even as a prisoner enduring physical torment, could still enjoy the happiness of a virtuous soul, then let them recognize the kind of true virtue by which a city might also be blessed. The happiness of a community and of an individual flows from the same source, since a community is nothing more than a collection of individuals living in harmony. For now, I won't debate what kind of virtue Regulus actually possessed. It's enough that his remarkably noble example forces them to admit that the gods should not be worshipped for the sake of physical comfort or material advantage, since he chose to lose all such things rather than break an oath sworn in their names. But what are we to make of people who take pride in having such a citizen, yet would dread having a city that lived as he did? If they don't actually dread this, then let them acknowledge that a community might suffer the same kind of catastrophe that befell Regulus, even while worshipping its gods just as faithfully as he did, and let them stop blaming their misfortunes on Christianity. As for our present concern with those Christians who were taken prisoner, let those who seize on this calamity to attack our life-giving faith, with an arrogance no less reckless than shameless, consider the following and hold their tongues: if it was no disgrace to the gods that their most devoted worshipper was stripped of his homeland without any hope of finding another, handed over to his enemies, and put to death by a slow and exquisitely cruel torture, all for the sake of keeping an oath sworn to them, then the name of Christ should far less be blamed for the captivity of those who trust in Him, since they, living in confident expectation of a heavenly homeland, understand that they are pilgrims even in their own houses.

Chapter 16: On the violation of the consecrated and other Christian virgins to which they were subjected in captivity, and to which their own will gave no consent; and whether this contaminated their souls

Critics think they have a devastating charge against Christianity when they intensify the horror of the captivity by pointing out that not only wives and unmarried young women, but even consecrated virgins, were violated. Yet in truth, none of this puts Christian faith, piety, or even the virtue of chastity in any real difficulty. The only genuine challenge is how to address the subject in a way that satisfies both modesty and reason. In doing so, our concern will be less to answer our accusers than to bring comfort to our friends. Let this, then, be established as an unshakeable foundation: the virtue that makes a life good is seated in the soul, and from there it governs the body's members, which become holy through the holiness of the will. So long as the will remains firm and unbroken, nothing that another person does to the body, or with the body, counts as any fault of the one who suffers it, provided that person cannot escape without sinning. However, since the body can be used not only to inflict pain but also to gratify another's lust, whenever something of this latter kind occurs, shame invades even a thoroughly pure spirit from which modesty has not departed. That shame arises from the fear that an act which could not be endured without some degree of physical sensation might be taken as evidence that the will had, in some measure, consented to it.

Chapter 17: On suicide committed through fear of punishment or dishonour

But even granting all of this, who with any human feeling could fail to forgive those virgins who took their own lives to escape such a fate? And as for those who chose not to end their lives, not wanting to escape someone else's crime by committing one of their own, anyone who condemns them for this is guilty of foolishness. Here is why: if it is not lawful to take justice into our own hands and kill even a guilty person without a proper public sentence, then the person who kills himself is a murderer, and all the more guilty for his own death given how innocent he was of the offense for which he condemned himself to die. We rightly condemn what Judas did, and truth itself declares that by hanging himself he only deepened his guilt rather than atoning for that most treacherous betrayal. By despairing of God's mercy in a grief that led only to death, he left himself no room for the kind of repentance that could have healed him. How much more, then, should a person who has done nothing deserving of such a punishment refrain from turning violence on himself! When Judas killed himself, he killed a wicked man; yet he left this life guilty not only of Christ's death but of his own, because even though he killed himself on account of his crime, that act of self-destruction was itself another crime. Why, then, should someone who has done no wrong do wrong to himself? Why kill an innocent person to escape someone else's guilt, and commit a sin of his own simply to prevent another's sin from being committed against him?

Chapter 18: On the violence which may be done to the body by another's lust, while the mind remains inviolate

But could we fear that another person's lust might contaminate the one who is violated against her will? It will not contaminate her if the lust truly belongs to another. If it does contaminate her, then it is no longer purely another's lust; it has become something she shares. But purity is a virtue of the soul, and its companion is fortitude, which will endure any suffering rather than consent to evil. No one, however courageous and morally upright, always controls what happens to their body; what a person controls is only the consent or refusal of the will. Given this, what reasonable person could conclude that if someone's body is seized and forcibly used to satisfy another's lust, that person thereby loses their purity? If purity could be destroyed in this way, then it would clearly not be a virtue of the soul at all. It could not be counted among those good things that make a life genuinely good, but would instead belong to the category of bodily goods, alongside strength, beauty, and sound health: things that can be diminished without diminishing the goodness or integrity of a person's life. But if purity is nothing more than a bodily good, why should anyone risk their life to preserve it? If, on the other hand, purity belongs to the soul, then it is not lost even when the body is violated. More than that, the virtue of holy continence, precisely because it resists the corruption of carnal lust, sanctifies even the body itself. When that continence remains unbroken, the body's sanctity is preserved as well, because the will to use the body rightly remains intact, and, insofar as the body itself is concerned, so does the capacity to do so.

This brings us to the question of bodily sanctity, which does not consist in the physical integrity of one's members or in their being untouched. Bodies are exposed to all kinds of accidents that do violence to them and leave wounds, and surgeons who treat these injuries often perform procedures that are difficult to watch. Consider a midwife who, whether through malice, accident, or incompetence, destroys a girl's virginity while examining her. Surely no one is foolish enough to believe that this physical damage causes the girl to lose any part of her bodily sanctity. As long as the soul maintains that firmness of purpose which sanctifies even the body, the violence inflicted by another person's lust leaves no mark on this bodily sanctity, which is preserved intact by one's own persistent self-control. Now consider the opposite case: suppose a virgin breaks the oath she has sworn to God and goes to meet her seducer with the full intention of giving herself to him. Can we say that, as she walks toward him, she still possesses bodily sanctity, when she has already destroyed the sanctity of the soul that gives the body its holiness? Certainly not. Let us draw the proper conclusion: when the soul's sanctity remains unbroken, the body's sanctity is not lost even if the body is violated; and equally, when the soul's sanctity is destroyed, the body's sanctity is lost even if the body itself remains physically untouched. Therefore, a woman who has been violated through another person's sin, without any consent of her own, has no reason to take her own life. She has even less reason to commit suicide in order to prevent such a violation before it occurs, because in that case she commits a certain act of killing in order to forestall a crime that is not yet certain and is not her own.

Chapter 19: On Lucretia, who took her own life because of the outrage done to her

Here, 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 not to her but to the man who violated her. But do those against whom we must defend not only the souls but the sacred bodies of these outraged Christian captives dare to dispute this? Everyone knows how loudly they praise the purity of Lucretia, that noble matron of ancient Rome. When King Tarquin's son violated her body, she revealed the young man's wickedness to her husband Collatinus and to her kinsman Brutus, both men of high rank and great courage, and bound them by an oath to avenge it. Then, heartsick and unable to bear the shame, she took her own life. What are we to call her? An adulteress, or a chaste woman? There is no question which she was. A certain orator captured the tragedy perfectly when he said: "Here was a marvel: there were two, and only one committed adultery." Forceful words, and true. For this orator, seeing in the union of two bodies the foul lust of the one and the chaste will of the other, and attending not to the contact of their physical persons but to the vast difference between their souls, declared: "There were two, but the adultery was committed by only one."

But why does the woman who played no part in the crime suffer the harsher punishment of the two? The adulterer was merely exiled alongside his father, while she paid with her life. If the act forced on her against her will was not impurity, then the punishment imposed on her despite her innocence is not justice. I appeal to you directly, you laws and judges of Rome. Even after the most heinous crimes, you do not allow a criminal to be executed without trial. If someone were to bring before your court a case proving that a woman, not only untried but chaste and innocent, had been killed, would you not punish the killer with proportionate severity? Yet this is precisely what Lucretia did. That celebrated and praised Lucretia killed an innocent, chaste, and violated woman. Deliver your verdict. But if you cannot, because no one stands before you to be punished, then why do you heap such extravagant praise on a woman who killed someone innocent and pure? You will certainly find it impossible to defend her before the judges of the underworld, if they are anything like the figures your poets love to describe, for she belongs among those

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

And if she, along with the others, wishes to return,

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

Or perhaps she isn't counted among the innocent dead because she took her own life out of guilt rather than a clear conscience. She alone knew her true reasons. But what if she was, in some hidden part of herself, drawn in by the act? What if she gave some measure of consent to Sextus, even as he violated her, and then was so overwhelmed by remorse that she believed only death could atone for what had happened? Even if that were true, she still should have stayed her hand from suicide. Had her false gods offered any real path to repentance, she could have pursued it. But if that is indeed what happened, if it wasn't simply a case of two people present but only one guilty, if both were in fact implicated (one through open violence, the other through hidden consent), then she did not kill an innocent woman. In that case, her learned defenders can hardly place her among those who, as the poets say, "guiltless sent themselves to doom." The case of Lucretia is caught in a dilemma with no clean exit: if you soften the charge of killing herself, you strengthen the charge of adultery; if you clear her of adultery, the charge of self-murder becomes all the heavier. There is simply no way through it. If she was guilty of adultery, why do we praise her? If she was truly chaste, why did she kill herself?

Nevertheless, for the purpose of refuting those who cannot grasp what true sanctity means, and who therefore mock our violated Christian women, it is enough to note what was said in praise of this noble Roman matron: "There were two, but the adultery was the crime of only one." Lucretia was widely believed to be incapable of any consenting thought toward the act committed against her. And yet, since she killed herself over an outrage in which she bore no guilt, it becomes clear that what drove her was not love of purity but the crushing weight of shame. She was ashamed that so vile a crime had been committed against her body, even without her participation; and this woman, with the Roman hunger for honor running deep in her, was seized by a proud terror that if she went on living, people would assume she had quietly accepted the wrong done to her. She could not open her conscience for others to inspect, so she judged that self-inflicted punishment would speak for her inner state. She burned with the thought that her calm endurance of another man's outrage might be read as silent consent to it. The Christian women who suffered as she did, and yet chose to live, reached a very different conclusion. They refused to punish themselves for the guilt of others, and so add crimes of their own to crimes in which they had no part. That is precisely what they would have done had shame driven them to take their own lives, just as their enemies' lust had driven them to violation. Within their own souls, before the witness of their own conscience, they hold the glory of chastity intact. In the sight of God they are counted pure, and that is enough for them. They ask nothing more. It is sufficient to have the opportunity to do good, and they will not escape the discomfort of human suspicion at the cost of departing from divine law.