Question V

GRATIAN. PART I. That it is lawful for no one to kill anyone is proved by that precept by which the Lord prohibited homicide in the law, saying: “You shall not kill.” Likewise in the Gospel: “Everyone who shall have taken up the sword will perish by the sword.”

Likewise Augustine to Count Marcellinus, concerning the captured Donatists, [epistle 159]. I have learned that those Circumcellions and clerics of Donatus’s party, whom the cause of public discipline had brought from the region of Hippo to trial on account of their deeds, were heard by your Nobility, and that very many of them confessed to the murder that they committed against Restitutus, a Catholic presbyter, and to the slaughter of Innocent, another Catholic presbyter, as well as to the gouging out of his eye and the cutting off of his finger. Hence the greatest solicitude was struck into me, lest perhaps your Sublimity decree that they be punished with such severity of the laws that they suffer things such as they did. And therefore by these letters I adjure your faith, which you have in Christ, through the mercy of our Lord himself, that you not do this and not at all permit it to be done. For although we could dissemble concerning their death, because they appear to have been presented for examination not with our people acting as accusers but by their notaries, to whom the vigilance for guarding the public peace pertained, nevertheless we do not wish the sufferings of the servants of God to be avenged, as it were, in the punishments of an opposing party—not because we prohibit the license for crimes from being taken away from wicked men, but because we wish this rather to suffice: that, alive and mutilated in no part of the body, they be directed either from insane restlessness to the repose of soundness by the coercion of the laws, or from malicious works be assigned to some useful work. This too is indeed called condemnation; but who does not understand that it is rather to be named a benefit than a punishment, where neither the audacity for raging is set free nor the salutary medicine of repenting withdrawn? Fulfill, Christian judge, the office of a pious father. Remember so to be inflamed against iniquity that you do not exercise the lust for avenging upon the atrocities of sinners, but apply the will to heal to the wounds of sinners. Do not lose the paternal diligence that you preserved in the inquiry itself, when you drew out the confession of so many crimes not by stretching them upon the rack, not by claws plowing them, not by burning flames, but by blows of rods—a manner of coercion that is applied both by teachers of the liberal arts and by parents themselves, and that is also often customarily employed by bishops in judgments. Therefore, do not avenge more harshly what you discovered more gently. The necessity of inquiring is greater than that of punishing. For even the mildest men ought diligently and insistently to examine an admitted crime for this purpose: that they may find those whom they may spare.

The same to Marcellinus, [epistle 158]. I ask you that their punishment, although they have confessed to such great crimes, be short of the penalty of death, both on account of our conscience and on account of commending Catholic gentleness. For the fruit of their confession itself reaches us, because the Catholic Church finds where she may preserve and exhibit mildness toward the most atrocious enemies. For amid such great cruelty, whatever vengeance shall proceed short of blood will appear great mildness. And although now this seems unworthy to certain of our people, moved by that atrocity, and like dissolution and negligence, nevertheless, when the commotions of minds—which are accustomed to be more turbulently aroused by more recent deeds—have passed, its excellently luminous goodness will appear.

The same to Donatus, [epistle 127]. There is one thing alone that we fear in your justice: lest perhaps—since whatever evil is committed against Christian society by impious and ungrateful men is assuredly graver and more atrocious than if it were committed against others—you too decree that it be restrained in proportion to the enormity of the crimes and not rather in consideration of Christian mildness. We entreat you through Jesus Christ not to do this. And a little later: § 1. From the occasion of terrifying judges and laws, we desire them to be corrected, not killed, lest they pay the penalties of eternal judgment; and we do not wish discipline concerning them to be neglected, nor that they be restrained by the punishments of which they are worthy. Therefore, so check their sins that there may be persons who repent that they sinned. And a little later: § 2. Consequently, if you think that these men are to be killed, you will deter us from bringing any such matter to judgment through our agency. When this becomes known, they will run riot to our destruction with more unrestrained audacity, the necessity being imposed upon us that we choose even to be killed by them rather than bring them before your tribunals to be killed.

The same, [to Macedonius, epistle 54]. Your severity, by whose ministry our peace too is assisted, is useful. Our intercession, by whose ministry your severity too is moderated, is useful. Let it not displease you that you are petitioned by the good, because neither does it displease us that you are feared by the evil. § 1. For the Apostle Paul frightened the iniquity of men not only by the future judgment, but also by your present secular powers, asserting that even they pertain to the dispensation of divine providence. “Let every soul,” he says, “be subject to higher powers, etc.” These words of the Apostle show the usefulness of your severity. Consequently, just as those who fear were commanded to owe love to those who terrify them, so those who terrify were commanded to owe love to those who fear them. Let nothing be done from the desire to harm, but all things from the charity of taking counsel, and let nothing be done brutally, nothing inhumanly. Let the vengeance of the examiner be feared in such a way that the piety of the intercessor is not despised, because both in punishing and in pardoning this alone is done well: that the life of men be corrected. But if there is such great perversity and impiety that the remedies neither of discipline nor of pardon support the correction of the matter, nevertheless, from every intention and conscience, which God beholds, whether by severity or by mildness, nothing but the office of love is fulfilled.

Nevertheless, this is to be understood of those whom present punishments change for the better, not of those who are obstinate in evil, who, if they lived forever, would sin forever, whose punishment begins here and will endure eternally.]

Likewise Jerome on the Prophet Nahum, [at c. 1]. What, then, he says, do you devise against the Lord? He who created the world will also bring about its consummation. What if he seems to you cruel and harsh and bloodthirsty because in the flood he destroyed the human race, rained fire and sulfur upon Sodom and Gomorrah, submerged the Egyptians beneath the waves, and laid low the corpses of the Israelites in the wilderness? Know that he rendered punishments at present for this reason, that he might not punish eternally. Surely either the things the Prophets speak are true or they are false. If the things that they appear to say concerning his severity are true, they themselves said: “The Lord will not judge twice for the same thing in tribulation”; but if they are false, then that which is said, “A double tribulation will not arise,” is also false; therefore, the cruelty written in the law is also false. But if it is true—and they will not be able to deny it, since the Prophet says, “God will not judge twice for the same thing in tribulation”—then those who were punished will not be punished afterward. But if they will be punished afterward, Scripture lies, which it is impious to say. Therefore, those who perished in the flood, the Sodomites, the Egyptians, and the Israelites in the wilderness received their evils in their life. § 1. Someone may ask here: if a faithful man caught in adultery is beheaded, what happens to him afterward? For either he will be punished, and that which is said—“He will not judge twice for the same thing in tribulation”—is false; or he will not be punished, and it is to be wished for adulterers that by a brief and swift punishment at present they escape eternal torments. To this we shall answer that God, just as he knows the measures of all things, so also knows the measures of punishments; that he is not forestalled by the sentence of a judge; that the power thereafter to exercise punishment upon a sinner is not taken away from him; and that a great sin is expiated by great and long-lasting torments. But if anyone has been punished like that man in the law who had cursed the Israelites and the man who had gathered wood on the Sabbath, such persons are not punished afterward, because a slight fault has been compensated by present punishment.

Likewise Gregory. Let the church defend those guilty of blood, lest she become a participant in the shedding of blood. PART II. GRATIAN. From this it appears that the evil are to be restrained by scourges, not punished by truncation of limbs or temporal death. § 1. But that which the Lord says to Moses is objected: “You shall not suffer sorcerers to live”; likewise: “He who shall have intercourse with a beast shall die the death.” One marked by the crime of adultery or blasphemy is also ordered to be stoned without mercy. Likewise Moses, who had received the law, punished the worshipers of the idol by death. Samuel also cut the exceedingly fat King Agag into pieces. Phinehas too pierced with a sword a Jew having intercourse with a Midianite woman, and this was reckoned to him as justice. Similarly, certain persons in the Old Testament are found to have slaughtered the evil, and they are called not transgressors of the law but defenders. § 2. Therefore, by that precept each person is prohibited from being armed by his own authority for the killing of anyone, not from handing the guilty over to death by the command of the law. For he who, exercising public power, kills the evil by the command of the law itself is held neither a transgressor of that precept nor an alien from the heavenly fatherland. Hence Augustine to Publicola, [epistle 154]:

Concerning killing men lest someone be killed by them, the counsel does not please me, unless perhaps he is a soldier or is bound by a public function, so that he does this not for himself but for others or for the city in which he too is, having received lawful power, if it befits his person. But perhaps something is furnished even to those who are repelled by some terror lest they do evil. Now it was said, “Let us not resist evil,” lest vengeance, which feeds the mind upon another’s evil, delight us—not so that we neglect the correction of men. Hence neither is he guilty of another’s death who, after he has drawn the circuit of walls around his possession, has someone perish when struck by their use. Nor is a Christian guilty if his ox kills someone by goring, or his horse by kicking; nor for that reason ought Christians’ oxen not to have horns, or a horse hooves, or dogs teeth. Or indeed, since the Apostle Paul took sufficient action that the ambush prepared for him by certain abandoned men be brought to the tribune’s notice, and on this account received armed escorts, if those criminal men had fallen upon them, would Paul have acknowledged his own guilt in the shedding of their blood? Far be it that the things we do or possess for a good and lawful purpose should be imputed to us if, through them, something evil should happen to anyone contrary to our will. Otherwise neither are domestic and agricultural iron tools to be possessed, lest someone kill either himself or another with them; nor trees to be planted, lest someone hang himself from one; nor a window to be made, lest someone cast himself down through it. And why should I recount more, when I could not finish by recounting them? What is there in the good and lawful use of men from which destruction cannot be inflicted? PART III. GRATIAN. But to kill himself is permitted to no one by any authority of law. Hence Augustine in Book I of The City of God, [c. 17]:

If by private power it is not lawful for anyone to kill an innocent man, for whose killing no law grants license, assuredly he who kills himself is also a homicide, and by so much does he become more guilty when he has killed himself as he was more innocent in that cause on account of which he thought he ought to be killed. For if we deservedly detest what Judas did, and Truth judges that, when he hanged himself with a noose, he increased rather than expiated the commission of that criminal betrayal—since, by despairing of God’s mercy and repenting ruinously, he left himself no place for saving penance—how much more ought he who has nothing in himself to punish by such a penalty abstain from his own slaughter? For when Judas killed himself, he killed a criminal man, and yet he ended this life guilty not only of Christ’s death but also of his own, because, although on account of a crime, he was nevertheless killed by another crime of his own. § 1. But why should a man who did nothing evil do evil to himself, and by killing himself kill an innocent man lest he suffer another man who is guilty, and perpetrate his own sin upon himself lest another’s be perpetrated upon him? Likewise, [c. 20]: § 2. In the holy and canonical books it can nowhere be found divinely commanded or permitted to us that we inflict death upon ourselves, either for the sake of attaining immortality itself or for the sake of avoiding or curing anything. For it is to be understood that we too were prohibited where the law says, “You shall not kill,” especially because it did not add “your neighbor,” as when it prohibited false testimony: “You shall not speak,” it says, “false testimony against your neighbor.” Yet if anyone should speak false testimony against himself, he should not on that account think himself alien from this crime, since he received the rule for loving his neighbor from himself, seeing that it is written: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Moreover, if he who falsely confesses concerning himself is no less guilty of false testimony than if he did this against his neighbor, although in that precept by which false testimony is prohibited it is prohibited against one’s neighbor and it can appear to those who do not understand rightly that it is not prohibited for each person to stand forth as a false witness against himself, how much more is it to be understood that it is not lawful for a man to kill himself, since in that which is written, “You shall not kill,” with nothing added thereafter, assuredly he himself to whom the command is given is not understood to be excepted? Likewise: § 3. “You shall not kill”—neither yourself nor another. For he who kills himself kills nothing other than a man. § 4. But the same divine authority itself made certain exceptions, though with these excepted whom God commands to be killed, whether by a law given or by an express command to a person for a time; or he himself who kills owes ministry to the one commanding, as a sword is a support to the one using it. And therefore those who waged wars with God as author, or who, bearing the person of public power, punished criminals by death according to the right of law—that is, the command of most just reason—in no way acted against that precept which was said: “You shall not kill.” And Abraham not only was not blamed for the crime of cruelty, but was even praised in the name of piety, because he willed to kill his son by no means criminally but obediently. And it is deservedly asked whether it is to be held as done by God’s command that Jephthah killed his daughter who met her father, when he had vowed that he would sacrifice whatever first met him when he returned victorious from battle. Nor is Samson otherwise excused because he crushed himself together with his enemies by the fall of the house, unless because the Spirit who worked miracles through him had secretly commanded this. Therefore, excepting those whom either a just law generally or God himself, the fountain of justice, specially commands to be killed, whoever kills a man, whether himself or anyone else, is bound by the crime of homicide. Likewise, [c. 26]: § 5. This we say, this we affirm, this we approve in every way: that no one ought to inflict voluntary death upon himself, as though by fleeing temporal troubles, lest he fall into perpetual ones; no one on account of another’s sins, lest by this very thing he begin to possess his own most grave sin; no one on account of his own past sins, for which there is greater need in this life so that they may be healed by repenting; no one as though from desire for a better life, which is hoped for after death, because a better life after death does not receive one guilty of his own death.

The same, Against Petilian, [Book II, c. 49]. You said: “The betrayer perished by a noose; he left the noose to such men.” This does not pertain to us at all. For we do not venerate under the name of martyrs those who bound their own necks.

Likewise Jerome on the Prophet Jonah, [at c. 1, not far from the end]. It is not ours to seize death, but willingly to receive it when inflicted by others. Hence also in persecutions it is not lawful to perish by one’s own hand—apart from a case where chastity is endangered—but to submit one’s neck to the striker.

Likewise from the Council of Braga, [I, c. 34]. It was resolved that for those who voluntarily inflict death upon themselves either by iron, or by poison, or by a fall, or by hanging, or in any manner, no commemoration be made for them in the oblation, nor are their corpses to be conducted to burial with psalms. For many claim this for themselves through ignorance. It was likewise resolved that this be done concerning those who die for their crimes. GRATIAN. “Impenitent” is to be understood. The same in the same Book I:

PART IV. When a soldier, obeying the power under which he has lawfully been established, kills a man, he is guilty of homicide under no law of his city; rather, if he does not do it, he is guilty of having deserted and despised the command. But if he had done this of his own accord and authority, he would have incurred the crime of shed human blood. And so, from the same source from which he is punished if he does it without being ordered, he will be punished if he does not do it when ordered.

Likewise in the Questions on Exodus, [question 39, at c. 11]. When a judge’s minister kills him whom the judge ordered to be killed, assuredly, if he does it voluntarily, he is a homicide, even if he kills him whom he knows ought to have been killed by the judge.

The same, [Book XXII Against Faustus, c. 73]. The eternal law has placed certain things in a kind of middle position in such a way that boldness is deservedly reproved in usurping them, while obedience is rightly praised in executing them. If Abraham had been moved of his own accord in killing his son, he would be held execrable; but by complying with God’s command, he performed service.

The same in the Questions on Matthew, [Book I, question 10]. The good can fulfill the offices of vengeance with a good intention, as can a judge, as can the law.

The same to Macedonius, [epistle 54]. He who is a prosecutor of a crime in order that he may be a liberator of a man is bound by the fellowship not of iniquity but rather of humanity.

The same, [in the same epistle]. Not in vain were instituted the power of the king, the right of the examiner, the executioner’s claws, the soldier’s weapons, the discipline of the ruler, and even the severity of a good father; let all these things have their measures, causes, reasons, and uses. When these things are feared, both the evil are restrained and the good live in peace among the evil.

Likewise. When a man is killed by a man, it makes a great difference whether it is done from a desire to harm or unjustly to take something away—as it is done by an enemy, as by a robber—or in the order of avenging or obeying—as by a judge, as by an executioner—or from the necessity of escaping or giving aid, as a robber is killed by a traveler, an enemy by a soldier. § 1. And sometimes he who was the cause of death is more at fault than the one who kills, as if someone should deceive his surety and the latter should pay the lawful penalty for him. Yet not everyone who is the cause of another’s death is guilty. For example, what if someone seeks fornication and kills himself if he does not obtain it? What if a son, fearing the pious blows of his father, perishes by a fall? What if another, because a man has been freed or lest another be freed, inflicts death upon himself? Surely on account of these causes of others’ deaths one must neither consent to crime, nor abolish even paternal vengeance for sin, which is done not from zeal for harming but for correcting, nor restrain works of mercy? When these things happen, we owe those persons human sorrow; we should not, on account of those things, restrain the will to do right lest they happen.

Likewise Isidore, [Book III of the Sentences on the Highest Good, c. 53]. Secular princes sometimes hold the summits of power attained within the church so that through that power they may fortify ecclesiastical discipline. Otherwise powers would not be necessary within the church, except so that what priests are not able to accomplish through the word of teaching the power may command through the terror of discipline. Often the heavenly kingdom profits through an earthly kingdom, so that those who, placed within the church, act against faith and discipline may be crushed by the rigor of princes, and the princely power may impose upon the necks of the proud that very discipline which the usefulness of the church is not able to exercise, and may impart the strength of power so that it may merit veneration. Let secular princes know that they will owe an account to God on account of the church that they undertake to protect for Christ. For whether the peace and discipline of the church is increased through faithful princes or dissolved, he who entrusted his church to their power exacts an account from them.

Likewise Pope Leo, [epistle 29 to the Empress Pulcheria]. All affairs cannot be secure otherwise unless both royal and priestly authority defend the things that pertain to divine confession.

Likewise from the Third Council of Tours, [c. 41]. Many incestuous persons, parricides, and homicides are found among us; but some of them are unwilling to lend an ear to the admonitions of priests, wishing to persist in their former crimes. Those who were unwilling to return through the saving admonitions of priests ought to be restrained from so depraved a custom through the discipline of secular power.

Likewise Jerome on Jeremiah, [at c. 22]. It is proper to kings to execute judgment and justice, and to free from the hand of false accusers those oppressed by force, and to furnish aid to the stranger, the orphan, and the widow, who are more easily oppressed by the powerful. And in order that he might instill in them a greater care for the precepts of God, he added: “Do not afflict them,” so that you not only rescue them, but not even suffer them, through your connivance, to come to be afflicted by others; “and do not shed innocent blood in this place.” For homicides and sacrilegious persons, etc. And after a few things: “If,” he says, “you do these things, O kings of Judah, you will hold your former power.” PART V. GRATIAN. But faithfulness and reverence ought to be preserved toward princes and powers themselves, and whoever does not exhibit them will not be able to find rewards with God. Hence the same Jerome, [in the epistle to Titus, c. 2, at the verse, “Servants, to their masters”]:

If they shall have been faithful to carnal masters in the least things, greater things will begin to be entrusted to them before the Lord. But he adorns the Lord’s doctrine who does the things that are fitting to his condition, just as, conversely, he confounds it who is not subject in all things, whose condition displeases him, who, as a contradictor and defrauder, shows good faith in nothing. For how can he be faithful in the substance of God who was not able to exhibit faithfulness to a carnal master?

Likewise Ambrose in Book I On the Patriarchs, [that is, On Abraham, c. 3]. Someone may say: since Abraham himself conquered, how does he say to the king of the Sodomites, “I shall take nothing from you,” when the spoil assuredly was in the power of the victor? He teaches military discipline: that all things be preserved for the king. To be sure, he asserts that a share of the profit was to be bestowed upon those who had perhaps been joined with him in aid, as the wages of labor. And therefore, since he did not seek a reward for himself from man, he received it from God, as we read it written that after these words the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision, saying: “Do not fear, Abraham; I shall protect you, and your reward will be exceedingly great.” PART VI. GRATIAN. Moreover, just as we are compelled to exhibit faithfulness and reverence to princes and powers, so the necessity of defending churches lies upon the administrators of secular dignities. But if they disdain to do this, they are to be repelled from communion. Hence John VIII:

Assuredly, the administrators of secular dignities, who without doubt ought to have been established for the protection of churches, the protection of orphans and widows, and the restraint of the rapacious, whenever they shall have been approached by bishops and ecclesiastical men, are to hear their complaints more attentively, and, according as necessity shall require, examine them without negligence and correct them with diligent zeal. But if, not having the fear of God before their eyes, they shall have been found to neglect this after a second and third admonition, let them know themselves deprived of all communion until worthy satisfaction.

Likewise Jerome on Joel, [at c. 2]. PART VII. Not only are men ministers and avengers of God’s wrath upon those who work evil—whence they do not bear the sword without cause—but also the opposing powers, which are called the fury and wrath of God.

The same on Isaiah, [at c. 13]. He who slaughters the cruel is not cruel, but appears cruel to those suffering. For a robber suspended upon a gibbet thinks the judge cruel.

The same on Ezekiel, Book III, [at c. 9]. He who strikes the evil in that in which they are evil, and has instruments of killing so that he may kill the worst, is a minister of the Lord.

The same on the Epistle to the Galatians, Book II, [at c. 3]. A judge is not the author of a crime by binding men.

The same on Jeremiah, [Book IV, at c. 22]. To punish homicides, sacrilegious persons, and poisoners is not the shedding of blood but the ministry of the laws.

Likewise Cyprian, [in the book On Exhortation to Martyrdom, c. 5]. If you hear in one of the cities that the Lord your God will give you to inhabit there persons saying, “Let us go and serve foreign gods, whom you do not know,” by slaying you shall kill all who are in the city by the stroke of the sword, and you shall burn the city with fire, and it shall be without an inhabitant forever; it shall not be rebuilt even now, so that the Lord may be turned away from the indignation of his wrath. And he will give you mercy and have mercy upon you and multiply you, if you hear the voice of the Lord your God and observe his precepts. Mindful of this precept and rigor, Mattathias killed the man who had approached the altar to sacrifice. But if before the advent of Christ these precepts concerning worshiping God and spurning idols were observed, how much more are they to be observed after the advent of Christ, when he, coming, exhorted us not with words alone but also with deeds?

Likewise Augustine, Against Petilian, [Book II, c. 83]. “No one is to be compelled to the faith,” as you say; but unbelief is accustomed to be chastised through severity—indeed, also through the mercy of God—by the scourges of tribulations. Surely because the best morals are chosen by freedom of the will, are the worst morals therefore not punished by the integrity of the law? But nevertheless a discipline that avenges living evilly is inverted unless a preceding care for living well sets the teaching before it. Thus, therefore, by the laws established against you, you are not compelled to do good, but are prohibited from doing evil. For no one can do good unless he has chosen, unless he has loved, which is in the free will. § 1. When the laws establish something against you, believe that you are being admonished to consider why you suffer these things. If it is on account of justice, truly those men are your persecutors, but you are the blessed who, having suffered persecution on account of justice, will possess the kingdom of heaven. But if it is on account of the iniquity of your schism, then those men are indeed your correctors, while you, like the other guilty persons of diverse crimes who pay penalties under the laws, are assuredly unhappy both in this age and in the future one.

The same, [in the same book, c. 92]. If Nebuchadnezzar was not for that reason a persecutor, because he most justly avenged the crime committed against holy Daniel, how is the blowing away of the sacraments of Christ to be avenged by kings, if the limbs of a Prophet, because they were placed in danger, merited to be avenged in this way?

The same, [in the book On the Unity of the Church, c. 17]. If holy and canonical Scripture proves that you have erected altars against the church of Christ, that you have been separated by a sacrilegious schism from Christian unity, which is spread throughout the whole world, and that you are adversaries of the body of Christ—which is the church spread throughout the whole world—by rebaptizing, blaspheming, and opposing it as much as you are able, are you not impious and sacrilegious? But those who decree that, for so great a crime, you are to be deterred and restrained by such light admonitions of losses, or by deprivation of places, honors, or money, so that, considering why you suffer these things, you may recognize and flee your sacrilege and be freed from eternal condemnation, are reckoned most diligent rulers and most pious counselors.

The same on the Epistle of John, [tractate VII]. Do not think that you love your servant when you do not beat him, or that you love your son when you do not give discipline, or that you love your neighbor when you do not correct him. That is not charity but languor. Let charity burn to amend, to correct. If the morals are good, let them delight; if they are evil, let them be amended.

The same on Book [XIX] of The City of God, [c. 16]. It is not a matter of innocence, by sparing, to permit a person to fall into a graver evil. Therefore, it pertains to the office of the innocent person not only to inflict evil upon no one, but also to restrain from sin or to punish sin, so that either he who was previously held in hatred may himself be corrected by experience, or others may be terrified by example.

The same to Laetarius. He who spares and favors the nourishment of vices lest he afflict the will of those sinning is no more merciful than one who does not wish to snatch a knife from a boy lest he hear him crying, and does not fear lest he grieve over him wounded or dead.

Likewise Haimo on the Epistle to the Romans, [c. 13]. There are certain enormous crimes that are avenged through the judges of the world rather than through prelates and rulers of churches, as when someone kills the apostolic pontiff, a bishop, a presbyter, or a deacon. The kings and princes of the world condemn guilty persons of this kind. Therefore, he who adjudicates such crimes does not bear the sword without cause. For they have been established especially on account of homicides and robbers, so that they may both condemn them and check others by fear of them.

Likewise Cyprian in the ninth kind of abuse. A king ought to restrain thefts, punish adulteries, destroy the impious from the earth, not suffer parricides and perjurers to live, and not suffer his sons to act impiously.

Likewise Augustine, On Free Choice, Book I, [c. 4]. If it is homicide to kill a man, one can sometimes kill without sin. For neither a soldier who kills an enemy, nor a judge or his minister who kills a guilty person, nor one from whose hand a weapon perhaps escapes unwillingly and unknowingly, seems to me to sin when they kill a man. But these are not even customarily called homicides. The same in the Questions on Leviticus, [question 68, at c. 19]: § 1. When a man is justly killed, the law kills him, not you.

Likewise Pope Pelagius. Let not the vain speeches of men delay you, when they say that the church carries out persecution while she either represses the things that are committed or seeks the salvation of souls. The tellers of such a report err. No one persecutes except one who compels to evil. But he who either punishes an evil already done or prohibits it from being done does not persecute, but loves. For if, as they think, no one is either to be reproved from evil or drawn back to good, human and divine laws must necessarily be emptied, which, with justice counseling, establish both punishment for the evil and rewards for the good. But that schism is evil, and that men of this kind ought to be oppressed even through external powers, both the authority of canonical Scripture and the truth of the rules of the fathers teach us. Therefore, whoever has been separated from the apostolic sees is without doubt in schism, and attempts to erect an altar against the universal church. § 1. But let your Glory consider what the canon inserted in the Council of Chalcedon establishes concerning such persons, where, after other things, it says thus: “He who withdrew himself from communion, made an assembly, established an altar, and refused to consent to the bishop when he called, and refused to acquiesce in or obey the same man when he called a first and a second time—let him be condemned altogether, never merit even prayer, nor be able to receive honor. But if he persists in making disturbances and seditions within the church, let him be restrained as seditious through an external power.” § 2. And blessed Augustine says concerning such persons: “Many things are also to be done in the case of persons who are unwilling and are to be punished with a certain benign harshness, whose advantage is to be consulted rather than their will. For in correcting a son, however harshly, paternal love is never lost; nevertheless, that which he would not wish is done so that he may suffer pain who, even unwilling, appears to be healed by pain.” Behold, you see how, by the testimony of so great a father, the church does not persecute by restraining such things, but always loves such persons by amending them. Therefore, you too do what we, knowing the intention of your Christianity, frequently exhort, and take pains that such things not be permitted to be done further, but also—which I do not doubt to be very easy for you—that those who have presumed to do such things be directed under fitting guard to the most pious prince. § 3. For your Loftiness ought to recall what God did through you at that time when, with the tyrant Totila possessing both Istria and Venetia and the Franks also laying waste all things, you nevertheless did not permit a bishop of Milan to be made before you had reported the matter to the most merciful prince, and had learned again from his writings what ought to have been done, and amid enemies raging everywhere, both he who was being ordained and he who was to ordain were nevertheless conducted to Ravenna by the providence of your Highness.

The same to Narses, Patrician [and Duke in Italy]. What shall I say of the bishops of the Ligurians, Venetians, and Istrians? Your Excellency is capable of repressing them both by reason and by power, yet you allow them, in contempt of the apostolic sees, to glory in their rusticity, although, if perhaps anything concerning the judgment of the universal synod that was held at Constantinople during the first indiction recently passed was moving them, they ought to have sent to the apostolic see—as was always done—certain persons chosen from among their own who could give and receive an account, and not, with closed eyes, tear apart the body of Christ our Lord, that is, the holy church. Therefore, do not hesitate to restrain men of this kind by princely or judicial authority, because the rules of the fathers specially established this: that if any person of ecclesiastical office resists the person to whom he is subject, or assembles separately, or erects another altar, or creates a schism, that person is to be excommunicated and condemned. But if perhaps he despises even this and persists in making divisions and schisms, let him be oppressed through the public powers. Behold, lord, because your spirit is perhaps timid lest you appear to persecute, I have taken care briefly to direct these things to you from the authority of the fathers, although there are a thousand other examples and constitutions by which it is evidently recognized that those who create rifts in the holy church ought to be restrained through the public powers not only by exiles, but also by confiscation of property and harsh custody.

The same. With what judgment we rejoice over the zeal of your Glory, we believe not only you but many and almost all persons to have knowledge; and for that reason we have now considered that we ought confidently to complain before your Glory concerning those things which, with you present there, we are astonished to see being done. For Tertius and Maximilian, having only the names of bishops, are said both to disturb ecclesiastical unity there and to apply all ecclesiastical property to their own uses, to such an extent that certain persons, compelled by necessity, came indefatigably to us over so long a journey and offered petitions against one of them, namely Maximilian. For this reason we have considered that Peter, presbyter of our see, and also Projectus, a notary, ought to be sent to those same places, so that they may either check there with worthy vengeance the things they shall discover to have been committed by the aforesaid pseudo-bishops against the canonical statutes, or conduct those same men all the way to us. And therefore, greeting your Glory with paternal affection, we ask that you furnish assistance in all things to the aforesaid persons who were directed from our see, and do not think it to be any sin if men of this kind are restrained. For both divine and human laws have established this: that those divided from the unity of the church and most iniquitously disturbing its peace are to be restrained even by secular powers. Nor is there anything greater from which you can offer a sacrifice to God than if you arrange that those who rage to their own destruction and that of others ought to be checked with fitting rigor.

Likewise Pope Pelagius, [to John the Patrician]. Reading again the letters of your Excellency, we indeed grieved greatly over the injury that the presumption of iniquitous men inflicted upon you. But because we know that, by the hidden judgment of God, your soul, even if through the iniquity and pride of others, was guarded from the contamination of schism, we gave thanks to almighty God, who is accustomed to work good things even from the evil acts of men. For it is not to be believed that it happened without his providence that senseless and most perverse men should leap forward even to this point: that, believing their division to be the Catholic Church, they prohibited you from their own pollution. For thus through the mercy of God it also came about, while they were ignorant, that, rescued from the communion of schismatics, it befell you to be preserved for the Catholic Church, which you love. Therefore, although your advantage was produced through their crime, nevertheless do not permit the presumption of iniquitous men to run riot unpunished. For if that which they presumed against your Glory has not been checked by vengeance, it ought no longer to be doubted what they may have power to inflict upon lesser persons. Therefore, exercise the authority owed in such matters and, lest their hope of committing such things further increase, let it be repressed by your coercions. For by God’s nod they presumed such things even against you for this purpose: that, with you correcting such things, by God’s favor you might be able to fortify others against their crime. But what kind of men those who flee the church are, the crimes of Euphrasius—which God willed no longer to remain hidden—evidently inform you: he who, in homicide, considered neither the bond of a human being, nor the charity of a brother, nor reverence for the priesthood. But in incestuous adultery he even took away the measure from vengeance itself, because if you punish the adultery, there remains nothing in which the incest may be avenged; if you inflict punishment upon the incestuous act, the crime of adultery will remain unavenged. Behold the fellowship from which come those who, as regards their pride, attempted to inflict injury upon you, and, as regards the providence of God, preserved you undefiled for the church. Remove such persons from that province; use the occasion offered to you by God for oppressing the faithless. This will be able to be done more fully if the authors of the crimes are directed to the most merciful prince, and especially the invader of the church of Aquileia, who, both in schism and accursed in it, will be able to retain neither the honor nor the merit of a bishop.

Likewise Nicholas to the army of the Franks. We wish the charity of all of you to know that whoever—which we say without wishing it—shall have died faithfully in this contest of war, the heavenly kingdoms will by no means be denied to him.

Likewise Urban II to Godfrey, bishop of Lucca. Impose upon the killers of excommunicated persons—as you have learned in the order of the Roman church—a measure of fitting satisfaction according to their intention. For we do not judge those men homicides who, burning with zeal for the Catholic mother against excommunicated persons, happen to have slaughtered some of them. Nevertheless, lest the discipline of the same mother church be abandoned, enjoin upon them, according to the tenor we have stated, a fitting penance by which they may be able to appease toward themselves the eyes of divine simplicity, if perhaps through human frailty they incurred some duplicity in that same crime.

Likewise Augustine, [epistle 50] to Boniface. For who among us would wish any of our enemies not only to perish but even to lose something? But if the house of David did not merit to have peace otherwise than if Absalom his son were extinguished in the war that he was waging against his father—although with great care he commanded his men that, so far as they could, they preserve him alive and safe, so that there might be one whom paternal affection could pardon when repentant—what remained for him except to weep for the one lost and, when the peace of his kingdom had been acquired, to console his sorrow? GRATIAN. Therefore, if holy men and public powers waging wars were not transgressors of that command, “You shall not kill,” although they destroyed certain flagitious persons by a deserved death; if a soldier obeying his power is not guilty of homicide if he kills any flagitious person at its command; if to punish homicides and poisoners is not the shedding of blood but the ministry of the laws; if the peace of the church consoles sorrow for the lost; if those who, inflamed by zeal for the Catholic mother, kill excommunicated persons are not judged homicides: it is plain that it is lawful not only for the evil to be scourged but even to be killed. § 1. But it is asked: if it happens that certain evil persons are punished by those who do not possess lawful power, are those through whom they are punished guilty of shed blood? Concerning them Ambrose writes thus, [Book II On Cain and Abel, c. 4]:

Sins are remitted through the word of God, whose interpreter and a certain executor the Levite is. They are remitted through the office of the priest and sacred ministry. Sins are also punished through men, as through judges who use power for a time. § 1. Sins are also punished through peoples, as we read that the Jewish people were often subdued by foreigners aroused at God’s command on account of offense against the divine majesty. GRATIAN. From this it is to be noted that God sometimes punishes sins through those who do not know, and sometimes through those who know. He punishes sins through those who do not know, as through Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus, the princes of the Romans, and certain kings of the gentiles he sometimes afflicted and sometimes took captive the sinning people of Israel. § 1. Hence the Lord himself says through the Prophet: “Assyria is the rod of my fury; but he himself did not know.” Assyria was the rod of the Lord’s fury because through it divine justice arranged to scourge innumerable nations. But he himself did not know, because, raised up in pride, he attributed the victory that he had obtained not to divine power but to his own strength. Hence against his pride the Lord speaks, saying: “Will the saw glory against him who cuts with it? Or will the axe be exalted against him who hews with it?” By these similitudes it is shown sufficiently clearly that, just as a saw and an axe can neither cut nor hew wood unless they are directed by another and therefore ought not to be proud against the one directing them, so those through whom God punishes are able to do nothing without the nod of the divine disposition and therefore it is not lawful for them to be proud against the one directing them. § 2. Such persons are said to serve God in that they punish; but in that, ignorant that they are ministers of God’s wrath, they are proud with impious vanity, they find from God only a temporal reward for their service, but do not escape the punishment of their pride. Hence, when the Lord said to the Prophet concerning Nebuchadnezzar, “What shall I give him for the labor by which he served me at Tyre?” he immediately added: “Give”—that is, announce that it has been given to him—“Egypt and Ethiopia.” But when, afterward growing proud in his heart, he said, “Is this not Babylon, which I founded in the strength of my kingdom? etc.,” God immediately changed his rational mind and clothed him with bestial savagery, so that, fleeing from men, he lived with beasts. § 3. Through Antiochus also, when the Lord was punishing the idolatry of the Jewish people and turning to their destruction the peace that they were seeking from casting aside God’s law and taking up the sacred rites of the nations, because, ignorant of God’s disposition, he attributed the devastation of that people to his own ability, the Prophet imprecates against him, saying: “Pour out your wrath upon the nations that have not known you, and upon the kingdoms that have not invoked your name, lest perhaps they say among the nations: Where is their God?” § 4. Similarly, when God had decreed to punish through the Romans the sin of Christ’s death, they began to ascribe the destruction of the city and the wretched captivity of the Jewish people to their own strength. Hence the Prophet imprecates against them, saying: “Raise your hands against the prides of those who hate you,” and who, having maliciously worked many things, placed the monuments of their victory in the midst of your court. § 5. Sins are punished through those who know, as through the sons of Israel God willed to punish the sins of the Amorites, Canaanites, and other nations whose land he gave to the Israelites to possess, to whom he also commanded that they spare none of them but hand all over to death. That this happened to them on account of their sins appears from the words of the Lord, who, when he said to Abraham, “To your seed I shall give this land,” and, as though he asked, “Why do you not give it to me now?” heard: “For the sins of the Amorites have not yet been completed.” They are understood to have been completed at the time when that people, freed from Egyptian servitude, received their land as an inheritance, as had been promised to Abraham. § 6. Therefore, when peoples are thus aroused by divine command to punish sins, as that Jewish people was aroused to occupy the land of promise and to destroy the sinful nations, guilty blood is shed without fault, and the things possessed evilly by them rightly pass into the right and dominion of the good. § 7. But when some persons are moved by a hidden prompting to persecute the evil, like Sennacherib and the others who persecuted the sinning people, although by the operation of a hidden prompting they are incited to persecute through the merits of those persons, nevertheless, because with a depraved intention they seek not to punish the sins of the offenders but to seize their goods or subject them to their dominion, they are not immune from crime. Concerning them it is also to be noted that they are sometimes aroused to punish the sins of the good, so that at last, through the good having been corrected, they themselves may also be punished; as it is read in the Book of Judges concerning Jabin, king of the Canaanites, and the Midianites, that on account of the idolatry of the people God raised them up to afflict Israel and occupy their land. But when the people of God, afflicted for a longer time under their hands, recognized their sin and appeased God toward themselves through penance, at God’s command Barak, accompanied by Deborah the prophetess, wife of Lapidoth, crushed Jabin, king of the Canaanites, and Sisera, leader of his army; and Gideon handed over to death Zebah and Zalmunna, kings of the Midianites, and Oreb and Zeeb, their leaders. § 8. It therefore appears that sometimes through those bearing lawful power, sometimes through peoples aroused by divine command, the evil are not only scourged for their sins but also rightly destroyed. Nor is that passage of Augustine contrary in which, pleading with Marcellinus for the Circumcellions, he asked that he restrain them with blows, not destroy them by death. For although by pleading he asked that a span of life be reserved for them, nevertheless he did not teach that the severity of the laws by which such persons are punished by death is not to be observed.