Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
These authorities are not instructing us that dead bodies have any feeling; they are pointing out that the providence of God, who approves such acts of duty and piety, is concerned with the bodies of the dead, so as to promote faith in the resurrection. There is a further saving lesson to be learnt here – how great a reward there may be for alms which we give to those who live and feel, if any care and service we render to men’s lifeless bodies is not lost in the sight of God. There are other examples of instructions given by holy patriarchs about the disposal or the transference of their bodies, instructions which they wished to be taken as uttered in the spirit of prophecy;
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but this is not the place to discuss them, and the examples we have given may suffice.
But if the absence of the necessities of life, such as food and clothes, although causing much misery, does not shatter the good man’s courage to endure with patience, and does not banish devotion from his soul, but rather fertilizes it by exercise, still less does the absence of the usual honours of funeral and burial bring misery to those who are at peace in the hidden abodes of the devout. Therefore where those honours were not paid to the bodies of Christians in the sack of their great city, or of other towns, no fault lay with the living, who were unable to offer them, and no penalty was suffered by the dead, who could not feel their deprivation.
14.
The divine consolations of the saints in captivity
‘But many Christians have been taken into captivity.’ This was certainly most pitiable if they could be taken anywhere where they did not find their God. The Bible provides great consolation for this disaster also. There were the three boys in captivity;
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Daniel also was in captivity
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and so were other prophets. They did not lack the consolation of God’s presence; so the God who did not desert the prophet in the belly of a sea-monster,
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did not desert his faithful followers under the domination of a people who, though barbarians, were still human. Our opponents choose rather to ridicule than to believe the tale of Jonah; and yet they believe the story, in their literature, of Arion of Methymna, that renowned minstrel, who was thrown overboard, and carried to land supported on a dolphin’s
back.
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Our story about the prophet Jonah is indeed more incredible. Obviously it is more incredible because more miraculous, and more miraculous because it is evidence of greater power.
15.
The story of Regulus, an example of captivity endured for religion’s sake, although a false religion
However, our opponents have, among their most eminent heroes, a notable instance of captivity voluntarily endured for religion’s sake. Marcus Regulus,
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the Roman commander-in-chief, was a prisoner in the hands of the Carthaginians. Since the Carthaginians preferred to have their own prisoners released by the Romans, rather than keep their Roman prisoners, Regulus was the man chosen to be sent to Rome with their deputation, having first bound himself by an oath to return to Carthage if he failed to obtain the result the enemy desired. He proceeded to Rome, and in the senate he successfully urged the rejection of the proposal, since he considered that an exchange of prisoners was not to the advantage of Rome. After the success of his plea he was not forced by his countrymen to return to the enemy, but since he had taken an oath, he voluntarily fulfilled his obligation and the enemy put him to death with every refinement of dreadful torture. They shut him in a narrow box, where he was forced to stand upright, and sharp nails had been fixed on all sides of it, so that he could not lean in any direction without the most horrible suffering; thus they dispatched him by keeping him awake.
Our enemies are certainly right to praise a courage which rose superior to so dreadful a fate. And yet he had sworn by those gods, the prohibition of whose worship has led, in their opinion, to the infliction of these recent disasters on the human race. This means that they were worshipped so that they might grant prosperity in this life. Now, if they either wished or allowed such punishment to be enacted on one who kept his oath, what heavier penalty could they have imposed in their anger on an oath-breaker?
I can conclude my reasoning by two lines of argument. Regulus
venerated the gods; and the result was that because of his oath he did not stay in his own country, but went without the least hesitation, not to any place he chose, but back to his fiercest enemies. His reward was a horrible end, so that if he thought his upright conduct brought any temporal advantage he was very much mistaken. In fact he showed by his example that the gods are no help to their worshippers as far as happiness in this world goes. He was devoted to their worship; yet he was conquered and taken into captivity and because he refused to break the oath he had sworn by the gods, he was destroyed by torture of an unprecedented and excessively atrocious kind.
If, on the other hand, the worship of the gods brings happiness hereafter as a reward, why do our antagonists bring false accusations against the established Christian order, alleging that catastrophe has come upon the city just because it has left off the worship of its gods? For the most conscientious worshipper could be as unfortunate as Regulus. Surely no one is so crazy, so preternaturally blind, as to contend, in defiance of the obvious facts, that while an individual worshipper can be unfortunate, a whole worshipping community cannot? As if it were more fitting for the power of the gods to preserve large numbers rather than individuals, seeing that a multitude is made up of individuals!
Again, if they say that Marcus Regulus would have been happy in the possession of a virtuous spirit even in captivity, and during those physical torments, then let us aim at true virtue, which can bring happiness also to a community. For the source of a community’s felicity is no different from that of one man, since a community is simply a united multitude of individuals. I am not at the moment discussing the nature of Regulus’s virtue; it is enough for my present purpose that our opponents are compelled by this notable example to admit that the gods are not to be worshipped for the sake of physical blessings or external advantages, since Regulus preferred to be deprived of all these rather than to offend the gods by whom he had sworn.
Now how are we to cope with men who are proud to have had such a fellow-citizen, but afraid to belong to such a community? If they are not so afraid, let them admit that what happened to Regulus could have happened also to a community which worshipped the gods as conscientiously as he did and let them cease to bring false charges against the Christian order. But since the question has been raised about those Christians who also were taken prisoner, let those who shamelessly and thoughtlessly jeer at the most wholesome devotion look carefully at this example and keep silent. This most diligent
worshipper of the gods was deprived of the only country he had, because he kept his oath to them, and was killed as a prisoner by a lingering death with torture of unexampled cruelty. If this was no reproach to those gods, there is much less reason to bring a charge against the Christian profession in respect of the imprisonment of its saints, who look for a heavenly country with true faith and know that even in their own homes they are no more than sojourners.
16.
Violation of chastity, without the will’s consent, cannot pollute the character
Our adversaries certainly think they have a weighty attack to make on Christians, when they make the most of their captivity by adding stories of the violation of wives, of maidens ready for marriage, and even in some cases of women in the religious life. On this point it is not our faith which is in difficulty, nor our devotion, nor is that particular virtue, the term for which is chastity, called in question. But our argument is in a way constrained and hampered, between the claims of modesty and reasoned argument. Here we are not so much concerned to answer the attacks of those outside as to administer consolation to those within our fellowship.
In the first place, it must be firmly established that virtue, the condition of right living, holds command over the parts of the body from her throne in the mind, and that the consecrated body is the instrument of the consecrated will; and if that will continues unshaken and steadfast, whatever anyone else does with the body or to the body, provided that it cannot be avoided without committing sin, involves no blame to the sufferer. But there can be committed on another’s body not only acts involving pain, but also acts involving lust. And so whenever any act of the latter kind has been committed, although it does not destroy a purity which has been maintained by the utmost resolution, still it does engender a sense of shame, because it may be believed that an act, which perhaps could not have taken place without some physical pleasure, was accompanied also by a consent of the mind.
17.
The question of suicide caused by fear of punishment or disgrace
Some women killed themselves to avoid suffering anything of the kind, and surely any man of compassion would be ready to excuse the
emotions which lead them to do this. Some refused to kill themselves, because they did not want to escape another’s criminal act by a misdeed of their own. And anyone who uses this as a charge against them will lay himself open to a charge of foolishness. For it is clear that if no one has a private right to kill even a guilty man (and no law allows this), then certainly anyone who kills himself is a murderer, and is the more guilty in killing himself the more innocent he is of the charge on which he has condemned himself to death. We rightly abominate the act of Judas, and the judgement of truth is that when he hanged himself he did not atone for the guilt of his detestable betrayal but rather increased it, since he despaired of God’s mercy and in a fit of self-destructive remorse left himself no chance of a saving repentance. How much less right has anyone to indulge in self-slaughter when he can find in himself no fault to justify such a punishment! For when Judas killed himself, he killed a criminal, and yet he ended his life guilty not only of Christ’s death, but also of his own; one crime led to another. Why then should a man, who has done no wrong, do wrong to himself? Why should he kill the innocent in putting himself to death, to prevent a guilty man from doing it? Why should he commit a sin against himself to deprive someone else of the chance?
18.
The question of violence from others, and the lust of others suffered by an unwilling mind in a ravished body
‘But’, it will be said, ‘there is the fear of being polluted by another’s lust.’ There will be no pollution, if the lust is another’s; if there is pollution, the lust is not another’s. Now purity is a virtue of the mind. It has courage as its companion and courage decides to endure evil rather than consent to evil. A man of purity and high principle has not the power to decide what happens to his body, but only what he will mentally accept or repudiate. What sane man will suppose that he has lost his purity if his body is seized and forced and used for the satisfaction of a lust that is not his own? For if purity is lost in this way, it follows that it is not a virtue of the mind; it is not then ranked with the qualities which make up the moral life, but is classed among physical qualities, such as strength, beauty, and health, the impairment of which does not in any way mean the impairment of the moral life. If purity is something of this sort, why do we risk physical danger to avoid its loss? But if it is a quality of the mind, it is not lost when the body is violated. Indeed, when the quality of modesty resists
the indecency of carnal desires the body itself is sanctified, and therefore, when purity persists in its unshaken resolution to resist these desires, the body’s holiness is not lost, because the will to employ the body in holiness endures, as does the ability, as far as in it lies.
The body is not holy just because its parts are intact, or because they have not undergone any handling. Those parts may suffer violent injury by accidents of various kinds, and sometimes doctors seeking to effect a cure may employ treatment with distressing visible effects. During a manual examination of a virgin a midwife destroyed her maidenhead, whether by malice, or clumsiness, or accident. I do not suppose that anyone would be stupid enough to imagine that the virgin lost anything of bodily chastity, even though the integrity of that part had been destroyed. Therefore while the mind’s resolve endures, which gives the body its claim to chastity, the violence of another’s lust cannot take away the chastity which is preserved by unwavering self-control.
Now suppose some woman, with her mind corrupted and her vowed intention to God violated, in the act of going to her seducer to be defiled. Do we say that she is chaste in body while she is on her way, when the chastity of her mind, which made the body chaste, has been lost and destroyed? Of course not! We must rather draw the inference that just as bodily chastity is lost when mental chastity has been violated, so bodily chastity is not lost, even when the body has been ravished, while the mind’s chastity endures. Therefore when a woman has been ravished without her consenting, and forced by another’s sin, she has no reason to punish herself by a voluntary death. Still less should she do so before the event lest she should commit certain murder while the offence, and another’s offence at that, still remains uncertain.
19.
Lucretia’s suicide