Question Sixth. On the Duel

347. Definition. A duel is defined as a single combat, undertaken by agreement, with arms apt for killing.

a. A single combat is a combat entered into between two, or between several in an equal number on each side. For constituting a true duel it makes no difference with what intention it is undertaken: for the sake of spectacle, of showing courage, of vengeance, of repairing honor, or of exercise.

b. By agreement is an essential condition of a duel, and indeed by agreement concerning time, place, and arms; whence between the agreement for the duel and the duel itself some space of time ought to intervene. Therefore it is not a duel if two men, from an impulse of anger, provoke each other to a fight and immediately engage, even if they betake themselves to a determined place in order to fight; nor if someone provokes another to a duel and immediately attacks him, while the latter, having snatched up arms, defends himself.

c. With arms apt for killing: for it is of the notion of a duel that it be done with arms, and indeed with arms apt for killing or lethally wounding, such as guns, swords, daggers. It is not of the notion of a duel that a lethal wound can be inflicted, or that there be danger of killing or mutilation; but this is required, that a grave wound can be inflicted of itself and not only by accident, that is, a wound which constitutes a grave injury of the body or a gravely sinful injury. Therefore fights which are made with switches or sticks, or with iron whose edge is blunted, are not duels; nor are they duels which are so instituted that a grave wound cannot be inflicted except by accident, for example, because of the lack of skill of the combatants.

d. A grave wound is taken in a threefold sense: in a moral sense it signifies an injury which constitutes grave sin; in a juridical sense it signifies an injury which is punished in court by a determined penalty; in this sense, in the Austrian code, an injury is considered grave which cannot be healed within twenty days; in a specific sense it signifies a lethal injury.

e. Therefore three things are of the notion of a duel: alpha. a single combat; beta. undertaken by agreement; gamma. with arms apt for killing or lethally wounding. By reason of the second condition, a duel differs both from a brawl and from legitimate defense.

f. A fictitious duel is not a duel. Therefore those who fictitiously provoke and accept without the intention of engaging, or with certain hope that the duel will be impeded, or who only fictitiously fight without any danger of a wound, do not incur censures and do not sin except by reason of scandal, since the will of dueling is excluded.

¹ Ferraris, Bibliotheca, s. v. duellum. Das Duell in seinem Ursprunge und Wesen (Paderborn: Schoningh, 1864). M. Hofmann, Stellung der Kirche zum Zweikampf (Zeitschrift fur kath. Theol., XXII, 1898, pp. 455, 601). A. Wiesinger, Das Duell vor dem Richterstuhle der Religion, der Moral, des Rechtes und der Geschichte (Graz, 1895).

348. A duel is divided: a. Into solemn, which is done with certain solemnities, namely letters of provocation and employed seconds, etc., and simple, which is done without solemnity.

b. Into fatal, which is to death or with the intention of killing, and non-fatal, which is done only with the intention of wounding.

c. Into public and private, according as it is undertaken by public authority or only in a private name.

That even non-fatal duels are by law true duels and fall under the penalties of a duel is gathered from the constitution Illius vices of Clement VIII, who interdicted even duels entered into with the pact "of ending the combat as soon as either one has been wounded or has shed blood." But the reason why the Church also punishes non-fatal duels as fatal by the gravest penalties is chiefly this: because they promote fatal duels.

349. Principles. 1. A duel undertaken by private authority is never licit. And indeed it is opposed to the law of nature: for duelists expose themselves to danger of death, mutilation, or at least wounding, to be inflicted both on themselves and on another; but this is equally illicit as the very killing, mutilation, or wounding inflicted on oneself or another. Nor can that action be made honorable from its end; for it is never licit to posit an action evil in itself for a good end. It is also opposed to ecclesiastical law: for the duel has been prohibited and punished with penalties by the Council of Trent and afterward more often by the Church.¹

a. Among the decrees by which duels are prohibited by the Church, especially to be noted is the constitution Detestabilem of Benedict XIV, by which five theses concerning the duel are condemned.² From these it is clear that every duel properly so called is illicit, even if it is offered or accepted to avoid the gravest evils, for example, lest reputation, office, or goods of great importance be lost. For that the acceptance of a duel may be licit for preserving the greatest goods, the good effect, or the conservation of the goods, ought to follow from the duel at least equally immediately as the evil effect, or the danger or injury of one's own and another's life. But the conservation of the goods does not follow immediately from this, that someone exposes his own or another's life to danger or injures it in reality, but from this, that one accepting a duel procures for himself the common estimation of those who, by a dangerous confusion of concepts, call culpable rashness true fortitude.

b. From the older authors, several had taught that it is licit to accept a duel if it were the only means of avoiding the gravest evils.³ But now this opinion, after the Benedictine constitution, can no longer be defended; rather this must altogether be held, that to expose one's own or another's life to danger is licit only for defending one's life or goods against an actual aggressor. But in this case there is no actual aggressor.⁴

2. Duels which are undertaken by public authority for the common good are licit, when that common good cannot be obtained without the shedding of blood. For if an army can licitly fight against an army by public authority, a few against a few, or one against one, will also be able to do this.

The sole cause of the common good on account of which a duel is licitly undertaken is this: that a just war may be ended or forestalled. But if duels are undertaken by public authority from another end, for example, to avenge an injury, to finish private controversies, or to manifest truth and innocence (the vulgar purgation), they are equally illicit, because to obtain these ends there is at hand another more apt means, namely legitimate judgment.

¹ Sess. 25, c. 19, De reform. Constitution of Gregory XIII, Ad tollendum (5 Dec. 1582); constitution of Clement VIII, Illius vices (17 Aug. 1592); constitution of Benedict XIV, Detestabilem (10 Nov. 1752); constitution of Pius IX, Apostolicae sedis (12 Oct. 1869); encyclical letter Pastoralis officii of Leo XIII (12 Sept. 1891). The Austrian criminal code also punishes duelists with the penalty of grave prison of at least ten years.

² They can be consulted in Lehmkuhl, I, n. 852; their first is this: A military man who, unless he offers or accepts a duel, would be held as fearful, timid, abject, and unfit for military offices, and thence would be deprived of the office by which he sustains himself and his own, or would have to lack forever the hope of promotion otherwise owed and merited by him, would be free from fault and penalty, whether he offers or accepts a duel.

³ St. Alphonsus (n. 400) attributes this doctrine to Holzmann, Pichler, Reiffenstuel, Sporer, Elbel, Lessius, Sanchez, etc.

⁴ Cf. Lugo, disp. 10, n. 172; Lehmkuhl, Das Duell im Lichte der Vernunft (Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, 1894, I, p. 345).

350. On academic duels. From the declaration of the Holy See it is clear that duelists of this sort and their seconds are irregular from infamy of law.¹ From this these three things are gathered: a. The single combats of students are true duels; for infamy of law is a penalty imposed on duelists by the Council of Trent. The same is clear from the nature of the thing: for in academic fights all things are present which constitute a true duel: a single combat undertaken by agreement with arms apt for lethally wounding. And although the danger of killing or mutilation is excluded of itself, nevertheless it is so instituted that a grave wound (in the moral sense) can be inflicted of itself, not only by accident. b. For a duel prohibited by the Church under penalties it is not required that there be danger of a lethal wound, but the danger of grave injury of the body suffices. c. Students who commit the Mensur incur excommunication; for if they incur the other penalty imposed by the Council, namely infamy, they also undergo this one imposed by the same Council. And indeed, if from the declaration of the Church they commit a true duel, they cannot escape the penalties inflicted by the same Church on duelists.

The penalties which are always affixed to duels and still have force are reckoned: a. infamy of law, which is contracted by the very fact of committing the duel, and from which irregularity arises; b. excommunication simply reserved to the Roman Pontiff; c. deprivation of ecclesiastical burial, if the duelists die in the conflict itself; to these penalties there can be added d. irregularity from delict, if death or mutilation really occurs.²

¹ S. C. C., 9 Aug. 1890.

² Cf. Acta s. sedis, XXIII, p. 212.