THE CITY OF GOD, TO MARCELLINUS, BOOK I

A...you wished to leave unpunished the killing of an innocent woman. If, therefore, someone were to bring this crime to your judgment, and prove to you that a woman was killed not only without being convicted, but while she was chaste and innocent, would you not punish him who did it with appropriate severity? This is what that Lucretia did—that Lucretia so highly praised—she killed the innocent, chaste Lucretia, who had suffered violence. Deliver your judgment. But if you cannot do so because she is not there for you to punish, why do you praise the killer of an innocent and chaste woman with such high acclaim? You certainly cannot defend her before the judges of the underworld, even those such as are sung of in the poems of your poets, for she is placed among those:

Who brought death upon themselves
With their own hands, though guiltless, and weary of the light
Cast away their souls, for which they desire to return to the upper world
alternative: Fate hinders; the swamp with its gloomy wave binds them.

†Fate hinders, and the swamp with its gloomy wave binds them.

Perhaps she is not there because she did not kill herself while innocent, but because she was conscious of some evil? What if, as she alone could know, she was actually enticed by her own lust and consented to the young man who violently burst in? In punishing this in herself, she felt such grief that she thought it must be atoned for by death. And she should not have killed herself even then, if she could have performed fruitful penance before the false gods. Nevertheless, if it happened in such a way, and it is false that there were two, and only one committed adultery, but rather that both committed adultery—one by manifest invasion, the other by hidden consent—she did not kill herself as an innocent woman. And thus it can be said to her scholarly defenders alternative: Not altered in their judgment of who she is. that she is not in the underworld among those who brought death upon themselves with their own hands while innocent. But this case is so constrained on both sides that if you minimize the homicide, you confirm the adultery; if you purge the adultery, you accumulate the homicide. There is no way out when it is asked: If she was an adulteress, why was she praised? If she was chaste, why was she killed? To us, however, in this noble example of this woman, it suffices to refute those who insult Christian women violated in captivity, while being far from any thought of holiness, that it has been said in her famous praises: B "There were two, and one committed adultery." For Lucretia was believed by them to be such a one who could not have been stained by any adulterous consent. Therefore, because she killed herself, even though she was not an adulteress, it was not an act of love for chastity, but a weakness of modesty. She was ashamed of another's impurity committed upon her, even if not with her; and the Roman woman, greedy for praise, feared too much that if she lived, it would be thought she had willingly suffered what she had violently suffered. Thus, she thought she had to present that punishment as a witness of her mind to the eyes of men, to whom she could not demonstrate her conscience. She blushed to be thought a partner in the deed, lest she be seen to bear patiently what another had basely done to her. Christian women did not do this, who live on after suffering similar things. Yet they did not avenge the crime of another upon themselves, lest they add their own crimes to the crimes of others: that is, if the enemies committed acts of defilement upon them by their lust, they would commit homicides upon themselves out of shame. They have the glory of chastity within, the testimony of their conscience; they have it before the eyes of their God, and they do not seek further alternative: unless. †where they might do right. They do not have more, lest they deviate from the authority of divine law, while they poorly evade the offense of human suspicion.

That there is no authority which grants to Christians, in any cause, the right of voluntary death. Chapter XX

For it is not in vain that in the holy and canonical books, it can nowhere be found that it has been divinely commanded or permitted to us that we should inflict death upon ourselves, whether for the sake of attaining immortality or to avoid or escape any evil. For we must understand that we are prohibited when the law says: "Thou shalt not kill," especially because it did not add "thy neighbor," as it did when it prohibited false testimony. "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor," it says. Yet, if someone were to bear false witness against himself, he should not think he is alien to this crime, since one who loves has received the rule of loving one's neighbor from oneself, given that it is written: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Furthermore, if one is no less guilty of false testimony who confesses a falsehood about himself than if he did so against a neighbor—when in that commandment where false testimony is prohibited against a neighbor, it might seem to those who do not understand correctly that it is not prohibited for someone to act as a false witness against himself—how much more must it be understood that it is not allowed for a person to kill himself, when in the commandment "Thou shalt not kill," nothing else is added, and neither is the one to whom it is commanded understood to be excepted. Hence, some try to extend this commandment even to beasts and cattle, so that from this it is not permitted to kill any of them. Why, then, not also herbs and whatever is rooted and fixed in the ground? For this kind of thing, although it does not feel, is said to live; and through this it can also die, and consequently, when force is applied, be killed. Hence, the Apostle, when speaking of seeds of this kind, said: "Thou, what thou sowest is not brought to life unless it first dies." And in the psalm it is written: "He killed their vines with hail." Are we, therefore, to think it a sin to pull a shrub when we hear "Thou shalt not kill," and thus succumb to the insane error of the Manichaeans? With these delirious ideas removed, when we hear "Thou shalt not kill," we do not accept this as being spoken about plants, because they have no sensation, nor about alternative: irrational. irrational animals, birds, fish, walkers, or creepers, because they are not joined to us by any reason, which it has not been given to them to have in common with us. Therefore, by the most just ordering of the Creator, both their life and their death are subjected to our needs. It remains that we understand the command "Thou shalt not kill" as applying to man; therefore, neither another, nor thyself. For he who kills himself kills nothing other than a man.