The City of God

Those against whom we have undertaken the defense of the City of God laugh at these things. Yet even the philosophers of the heathens have despised the care of burial. Often, entire armies, while dying for an earthly fatherland, did not care where they would lie afterward or to which beasts they would become prey. And because of this, poets could plausibly say:

He who has no urn is covered by the sky. Lucan, Pharsalia 7.819

How much less, then, should they insult Christians over unburied bodies, to whom it is promised that the restoration of both the flesh and all its members shall be rendered in a point of time, not only from the earth but also from the most secret depths of other elements into which the decayed corpses have receded.

What is the reason for burying the bodies of the saints. Chap. XIII

B Nevertheless, the bodies of the deceased, especially those of the just and faithful, are not to be despised and cast aside, for the Holy Spirit used them as organs and vessels for all good works. If a father's garment, ring, or anything of that sort is dearer to his descendants in proportion to the affection they held for him, then the bodies themselves must by no means be spurned, for we wear them much more familiarly and intimately than any clothing. These things pertain not to ornament or help provided from without, but to the very nature of man. Hence, the funerals of the just of old were conducted with dutiful piety, the obsequies were celebrated, and burial was provided. While they lived, they themselves commanded their children regarding the burial or even the transfer of their bodies. And Tobias, by burying the dead, is commended as having pleased God, according to the witness of the angel. Our Lord himself, who was to rise on the third day, preaches the good work of the religious woman and commands that it be preached, because she poured precious ointment over his limbs and did this for his burial. And those who took his body down from the cross and carefully and honorably saw to it that he be covered and buried are laudably remembered in the Gospel.

Truly, these authorities do not advise that there is any sensation in corpses, but they signify that the bodies of the dead also pertain to the providence of God, to whom even such offices of piety are pleasing, on account of the faith of the resurrection to be established. From this, we also healthily learn how great the reward can be for the alms we offer to the living and sentient, if nothing of the duty and diligence rendered to the inanimate limbs of men is lost before God. There are indeed other things that the holy patriarchs wished to be understood by a prophetic spirit regarding the entombment or transfer of their bodies. However, this is not the place to discuss them, since what we have said is sufficient. But if those things necessary for sustaining the living, such as food and clothing, do not break the virtue of enduring and bearing in good men, even when they are lacking with grievous affliction, and do not eradicate piety from the mind but make it more fruitful through exercise, how much more so do they not render miserable those already resting in the hidden dwellings of the pious when those things usually applied to the care of funerals and the entombing of the bodies of the deceased are absent? And thus, when these things were lacking for the corpses of Christians during the devastation of that great city or of other towns, it is neither the fault of the living, who could not provide them, nor the punishment of the dead, who cannot feel them.