On Care for the Dead 1–14

For a long time, venerable fellow bishop Paulinus, I have been in your holiness's debt for a reply, ever since you wrote to me by the people of our most devout daughter Flora, asking me whether it profits anyone after death that his body is buried at the shrine of some saint. The widow just mentioned had asked this of you for her son, who died in those parts, and you had written back to console her, and also to tell her that what she had desired with a mother's devoted affection had been done with the body of the faithful young man Cynegius: namely, that it had been laid in the basilica of the most blessed confessor Felix. On that occasion it came about that by the same bearers of your letter you wrote to me as well, putting a question of this kind and asking me to reply with what I thought of it, while not keeping silent yourself about what you think. For you say that the impulses of religious and faithful souls who take care of these things for their own people do not seem to you to be empty. You add also that it cannot be void that the whole church is accustomed to make supplication for the dead, so that from this one might also conjecture that it profits a person after death if, by the faith of his own people, a place is provided for the burial of his body in which the help of the saints, sought in this way too, may be shown.

But you indicate that you do not see well enough how this opinion is not contrary to what the apostle says: "For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive according to what he has done through the body, whether good or evil." For this apostolic sentence warns that what can profit after death must be done before death, not then, when each is already to receive what he has done before death. But the question is resolved in this way: by a certain kind of life, while one lives in this body, it is acquired that these things may help the departed; and so it is according to what they have done through the body that they are helped by the things religiously done for them after the body. For there are some whom these things do not help at all, whether they are done for those whose deserts are so bad that they are not worthy to be helped even by such things, or for those whose deserts are so good that they have no need of such helps. It is by the kind of life, then, that each has led through the body that whatever is devoutly done for him after he has left the body profits him or does not. For the merit through which these things may profit, if none has been gained in this life, is sought in vain after this life. So it comes about both that the church, or the care of one's own people, does not spend in vain on the dead whatever religious service it can, and yet that each receives according to what he has done through the body, whether good or evil, the Lord rendering to each according to his works. For that what is spent on him may be able to profit him after the body was acquired in the life that he led in the body.

My brief answer could have sufficed for your inquiry; but give me your attention a little while for other things that trouble people, to which I think a reply should be made. In the books of the Maccabees we read that a sacrifice was offered for the dead. But even if it were read nowhere at all in the ancient Scriptures, the authority of the whole church, which shines out in this custom, is not small: in the prayers of the priest that are poured out to the Lord God at his altar, the commendation of the dead also has its place. But whether the place of his body profits the soul of a dead man in any way must be inquired into more carefully. And first we must see whether it makes any difference, in bringing on or increasing misery after this life for the spirits of men, if their bodies have not been buried, and we must see this not according to popular opinion, however widespread, but rather according to the sacred writings of our religion. For we must not believe, as is read in Maro, that the unburied are prevented from sailing across and passing over the river of the underworld, because, as he says, it is not granted "to carry them over the dreadful banks and the hoarse streams before their bones have come to rest in their abodes." Who would incline a Christian heart to these poetic and fabulous fictions, when the Lord Jesus, so that Christians might fall without fear into the hands of enemies who had their bodies in their power, declares that not a hair of their head will perish, and exhorts them not to fear those who, when they have killed the body, have nothing more that they can do? On this, in the first book of The City of God, I have said enough, as I judge, to blunt the tooth of those who, blaming the barbarian devastation, especially that which Rome recently suffered, on Christian times, also object that Christ did not come to the aid of his own there. When they have been answered that the souls of the faithful were received by him on account of the merits of their faith, they sneer about the unburied corpses. So I dealt with this whole topic of burial in words such as these.

("'But in such a slaughter of bodies,' I said, 'they could not even be buried.' Devout faith does not greatly dread even this, holding what was foretold, that beasts consuming them will not harm bodies that are to rise again, bodies of which not a hair of the head will perish. The Truth would by no means say, 'Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul,' if whatever enemies might choose to do with the bodies of the slain could harm the life to come. Unless perhaps someone is so absurd as to contend that those who kill the body are not to be feared before death, lest they kill the body, but are to be feared after death, lest they not allow the killed body to be buried. Is what he says false, then: 'Those who kill the body and afterward have nothing that they can do,' if they have so much that they can do with corpses? Far be it that what the Truth said should be false! For it is said that they do something when they kill, because there is feeling in the body as it is being killed, but that afterward they have nothing that they can do, because there is no feeling in a body that has been killed. So the earth has not covered many bodies of Christians, but no one has separated any of them from heaven and earth, which he fills wholly with his presence who knows from where to raise up what he created. It is indeed said in the psalm: 'They have given the mortal remains of your servants as food to the birds of the sky, the flesh of your saints to the beasts of the earth; they have poured out their blood like water around Jerusalem, and there was no one to bury them'; but this was said rather to magnify the cruelty of those who did these things, not the unhappiness of those who suffered them. For although these things seem hard and dreadful in the sight of men, yet 'precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.' Therefore all these things, that is, the care of the funeral, the placing of the burial, the procession of the obsequies, are more a comfort for the living than a help for the dead. If a costly burial profits the ungodly at all, a mean one or none will harm the godly. A crowd of servants gave that rich man in purple a splendid funeral in the sight of men, but a far more glorious one in the sight of the Lord was the ministry of angels that attended that poor man covered with sores; they did not carry him out to a marble tomb, but lifted him up into Abraham's bosom. Those against whom we have undertaken to defend the City of God laugh at these things. Yet even their philosophers despised the care of burial. And often whole armies, while dying for their earthly homeland, did not care where they would lie afterward or to what beasts they would become food, and the poets were allowed to say of this, to applause: 'He is covered by the sky who has no urn.' How much less ought they to sneer at Christians about unburied bodies, to whom is promised the re-forming of the flesh itself and of all its members, to be restored and made whole in a moment of time, not only out of the earth but also out of the most secret bosom of the other elements into which dissolved corpses have withdrawn!

"Yet the bodies of the departed are not on that account to be despised and cast away, especially those of the righteous and faithful, which the Spirit has used in holiness as instruments and vessels for all good works. For if a father's garment and ring, and anything else of the kind, is dearer to his descendants the greater their affection toward their parents, the bodies themselves are by no means to be spurned, which we wear far more intimately and closely than any clothing. For these belong not to adornment or to an aid applied from outside, but to the very nature of man. Hence the funerals of the righteous of old were cared for with dutiful devotion, their obsequies were celebrated and burial provided; and they themselves, while they lived, gave charge to their sons about burying or even moving their bodies. And Tobit is commended, on the angel's testimony, for having won God's favor by burying the dead. The Lord himself too, who was to rise on the third day, proclaims the good work of a devout woman and commends it to be proclaimed, 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 its being wrapped and buried are praised and remembered in the gospel. Yet these authorities do not teach that there is any feeling in corpses, but they indicate that the bodies of the dead also belong to the providence of God, who is pleased even by such duties of devotion, for the sake of establishing faith in the resurrection. Here we also learn, to our profit, how great a reward there can be for the alms we give to the living who feel, if not even this is lost before God, the duty and care paid to the lifeless members of men. There are indeed other things that the holy patriarchs said about burying or moving their bodies which they wished to be understood as spoken in the prophetic Spirit; but this is not the place to treat them, since what we have said is enough. But if the things necessary for sustaining the living, such as food and clothing, though lacking with grievous affliction, do not break the strength of endurance and patience in the good, nor root out devotion from the soul, but make it more fruitful by exercise, how much less, when the things usually applied in caring for funerals and burying the bodies of the dead are lacking, do they make wretched those who are already at rest in the hidden abodes of the godly! And so, when these things were lacking for the corpses of Christians in that devastation of the great city or of other towns too, it is neither the fault of the living, who could not provide them, nor the punishment of the dead, who cannot feel them.") This is my view on the cause and reason of burial. I have transferred it into this book from another book of mine because it was easier for me to repeat it than to express the same thing in another way.

If this is true, then surely providing a place at the shrines of the saints for burying bodies is also a matter of good human affection toward the funerals of one's own; for if there is some religious duty in their being buried, there cannot be none in attending to where they are buried. But while such comforts of the living are sought, in which their devoted affection toward their own may appear, I do not see what help they are to the dead except this: that as they recall where the bodies of those they love have been laid, they commend them by prayer to those same saints, as patrons who have taken them into their care, to be helped before the Lord. This they could indeed do even if they could not bury them in such places. But the elaborate tombs of the dead are called memoriae or monumenta for no other reason than that they call back to memory those who have been withdrawn by death from the eyes of the living, lest by forgetfulness they be withdrawn from their hearts as well, and by reminding cause them to be thought of. For the name memoria shows this most plainly, and monumentum is so named because it admonishes (monet) the mind, that is, reminds it. For this reason the Greeks too call what we name a memoria or monumentum a mnēmeion, since in their language memory itself, by which we remember, is called mnēmē. So when the mind recalls where the body of a very dear one is buried, and a place venerable by the name of a martyr comes to mind, the affection of one who remembers and prays commends the beloved soul to that same martyr. When this affection is shown by the faithful to their dearest dead, there is no doubt that it profits those who, while they lived in the body, earned that such things should profit them after this life. But even if some necessity, no opportunity being given, does not allow bodies to be buried at all, or to be buried in such places, the supplications for the spirits of the dead are not to be passed over. The church has undertaken to make them for all who have died in the Christian and catholic fellowship, even without their names, under a general commemoration, so that those who lack parents or sons or any kinsmen or friends for this may have it provided for them by the one devoted mother of all. But if these supplications that are made with right faith and devotion for the dead were lacking, I think it would profit their spirits nothing, however holy the places where their lifeless bodies were laid.

So when a faithful mother desired the body of her faithful son who had died to be laid in the basilica of a martyr, if she believed that his soul would be helped by the merits of the martyr, this very believing was a kind of supplication, and this profited, if anything profited. And when she returns in mind to the same tomb and commends her son more and more in her prayers, what helps the spirit of the departed is not the place of the dead body but the living affection of the mother, springing from the memory of the place. For the thought both of who is commended and to whom touches the religious mind of the one who prays, and surely not without fruit. For those who pray also do with the members of their body what befits suppliants, when they kneel, when they stretch out their hands, or even lie prostrate on the ground, and whatever else they do visibly, although their invisible will and the intention of their heart are known to God, and he has no need of these signs for the human mind to be laid open to him. But by this a person stirs himself up to pray and groan more humbly and fervently; and somehow, although these movements of the body cannot happen unless a movement of the mind precedes them, yet when they have been done outwardly and visibly, the inner invisible movement that made them is increased, and so the affection of the heart, which preceded so that they might be done, grows because they have been done. Yet if someone is held or even bound so that he cannot do these things with his members, the inner man does not on that account cease to pray, and lies prostrate before the eyes of God in the most secret chamber, where he is pierced with sorrow. So too, although it matters a great deal where he lays the body of his dead who prays to God for that one's spirit, because the prior affection chose a holy place, and when the body has been laid there the remembrance of the holy place renews and increases the affection that had gone before, nevertheless, even if he cannot bury the one he loves where his religious mind chose, he must by no means cease from the necessary supplications in commending him. For wherever the flesh of the departed lies or does not lie, rest must be gained for the spirit, which, when it went out from there, took with it the feeling by which it can matter how each one is, whether in good things or in evil; nor does it look to be helped in its life by that flesh to which it gave life, which it withdrew in departing and will give back in returning; for it is not the flesh that earns for the spirit, but the spirit for the flesh, even the deserving of its resurrection, whether it revives to punishment or to glory.

We read in the Church History, which Eusebius wrote in Greek and Rufinus turned into the Latin language, that the bodies of martyrs in Gaul were thrown to dogs, and that what the dogs left and the bones of the dead were burned in fires until they were utterly consumed, and the ashes were scattered in the river Rhône, so that nothing at all might be left for any memorial. This is to be believed to have been permitted by God for no other reason than that Christians might learn, in confessing Christ, while they despise this life, far more to despise burial. For if what was done with the bodies of the martyrs with such enormous cruelty did them any harm, so that their most victorious spirits rested less blessedly, it would surely not have been allowed to happen. So it was shown by the fact itself that the Lord did not say, "Do not fear those who kill the body and afterward have nothing that they can do," because he would not allow them to do anything with the bodies of his own who had died, but because whatever they were allowed to do, nothing would be done by which the happiness of the Christian dead would be lessened; nothing of it would reach the feeling of those who live after death; nothing would even tend to the loss of the bodies themselves, so that they would rise less whole.

And yet, from that affection of the human heart by which "no one ever hates his own flesh," if people learn that after their death something will be lacking to their bodies that the solemn custom of burial requires in their own nation or country, they are saddened as human beings, and they fear for their bodies before death what does not concern them after death. So much so that in the books of Kingdoms God is found threatening, through one prophet, another prophet who had transgressed his word, that his corpse would not be brought into the tomb of his fathers. The scripture reads thus: "Thus says the Lord: Because you have been disobedient to the mouth of the Lord and have not kept the commandment that the Lord your God commanded you, and have turned back and eaten bread and drunk water in the place where he commanded you not to eat bread nor drink water, your corpse shall not be brought into the tomb of your fathers." How much this penalty is to be weighed, if we think according to the gospel, where we have learned that after the body has been killed nothing is to be feared lest the lifeless members suffer, it is not even to be called a penalty. But if we consider human affection toward one's own flesh, he could be frightened or saddened while alive by what he would not feel when dead; and this was the penalty, that his mind grieved that this would happen to his body, although it would not grieve when it happened. For the Lord willed to chastise his servant only so far, who had disregarded carrying out his command not through his own obstinacy but, deceived by another's falsehood, thought he was obeying when he was not obeying. For we must not think that he was slain by the bite of the beast in such a way that his soul was then snatched off to the punishment of Tartarus, seeing that the very lion that had killed him guarded his body, while the beast he rode was left unharmed and stood fearlessly beside the savage animal at its master's corpse. By this wonderful sign it appears that the man of God was rather restrained temporally, even to death, than punished after death. On which point the apostle, having mentioned the sicknesses and deaths of many on account of certain offenses, says: "For if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged by the Lord; but when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, so that we may not be condemned with the world." The very one who had deceived him buried him quite honorably in his own tomb, and arranged to be buried himself beside his bones, hoping in this way that his own bones too might be spared when the time came in which, according to the prophecy of that man of God, Josiah king of Judah dug up the bones of many dead in that land and with those bones defiled the sacrilegious altars that had been set up for carved images. For he spared that tomb where the prophet lay who had foretold these things more than three hundred years before; and on his account the burial of the one who had misled him was not violated either. For by that affection by which no one ever hates his own flesh, he had provided for his corpse who had killed his soul by a lie. From this, then, that everyone naturally loves his own flesh, it was a penalty to the one to learn that he would not be in the tomb of his fathers, and a care to the other to see to it that his bones were spared, if he lay beside the one whose tomb no one would violate.

This affection the martyrs of Christ overcame as they contended for the truth. Nor is it any wonder that they despised what they would not feel once death was accomplished, who could not be overcome by the tortures that they felt while alive. God could certainly, he who did not allow the lion to touch any further the prophet's body that it had killed, and made the slayer a guardian, he could, I say, have kept the dogs to which they had been thrown from the killed bodies of his own; he could have terrified the savagery of the men themselves in countless ways, so that they would not dare to burn the corpses or scatter the ashes. But this trial too could not be lacking from the manifold variety of temptations, lest the courage of confession, which would not yield to the brutality of persecution for the sake of the body's safety, should tremble for the honor of the tomb; lastly, lest faith in the resurrection should dread the consuming of bodies. These things too, therefore, had to be permitted, so that even after such examples of so great horror the martyrs, fervent in the confession of Christ, might become witnesses of this truth as well, in which they had learned that those by whom their bodies were killed afterward have nothing that they can do, since whatever they did to dead bodies, they surely did nothing, since in flesh wholly without life neither could he who had departed from it feel anything, nor could he who created it lose anything from it. But amid these things that were done to the bodies of the slain, while the martyrs, not fearing them, suffered with great courage, there was nevertheless great mourning among the brethren, because no power was given to pay due rites to the funerals of the saints, nor did the watches of the cruel guards allow them to take anything away secretly, as the same history testifies. So while no misery touched those who had been killed, in the tearing of their limbs, in the burning of their bones, in the scattering of their ashes, great compassion tormented those who could bury nothing of them, because in a way they felt for those who in no way felt, and where there was no longer any suffering of the martyrs, there was the pitiful fellow-suffering of the brethren.

According to this pitiful compassion of which I have spoken, those who showed the mercy of burial to the dry bones of Saul and Jonathan are praised and blessed by King David. But what mercy, pray, is shown to those who feel nothing? Or must we perhaps recall the opinion that the unburied could not cross the river of the underworld? Far be this from the Christian faith; otherwise it went very badly with so great a multitude of martyrs whose bodies could not be buried, and the Truth spoke to them deceitfully, "Do not fear those who kill the body and afterward have nothing that they can do," if they were able to do them such great evils as to prevent them from crossing to the places they longed for. But since this is beyond all doubt utterly false, and the denial of burial to their bodies harms the faithful in no way, and if it is given to unbelievers it profits them nothing, why then are those who buried Saul and his son said to have done mercy, and for this blessed by a godly king, unless because the hearts of the merciful are well disposed when they grieve over things done to others' dead bodies that, by that affection by which no one ever hates his own flesh, they do not wish to be done to their own bodies after their death; and what they wish to have shown to themselves when they will not feel it, they take care to show to others who do not feel, while they themselves feel?

Certain visions are told of that seem to bring into this discussion a question not to be neglected. For it is reported that some dead people have appeared to the living, either in sleep or in some other way, to people who did not know where their bodies lay unburied, and, showing them the places, have admonished them to provide the burial that had been lacking. If we answer that these reports are false, we shall seem to go shamelessly against the writings of certain of the faithful and against the perceptions of those who affirm that such things happened to them. But the answer must be that it is not to be thought that the dead perceive these things just because they seem in dreams to say or show or ask for them. For living people also often appear to the living as they sleep, while they themselves do not know that they appear, and they hear from them what they dreamed, as they say that they saw them in their sleep doing or saying something. If, then, someone can see me in sleep showing him something that has happened, or even foretelling something that will happen, while I am altogether ignorant of it and care nothing at all, not only about what he dreams, but whether he is awake while I sleep, or sleeps while I am awake, or whether we are both awake or asleep at one and the same time, when he sees the dream in which he sees me: what wonder is it if the dead, not knowing or perceiving these things, are nevertheless seen by the living in dreams and say something which they find to be true on waking? I would believe, then, that it happens by the operations of angels, whether it is permitted from above or commanded, that they seem in dreams to say something about burying their bodies, when those whose bodies they are know nothing of it at all. And this is sometimes done usefully, either for some sort of comfort to the living, to whom those dead belong whose images appear to the dreamers, or so that by these admonitions the humane duty of burial may be commended to the human race, a duty which, although it does not help the dead, is nevertheless neglected with culpable irreligion. But sometimes by deceptive visions people are sent into great errors, whom it is just to suffer such things. For example, suppose someone sees in sleep what Aeneas, by poetic falsehood, is told to have seen in the underworld: the image of some unburied person appears to him and says such things as Palinurus is said to have spoken to Aeneas; and when he wakes he finds the body in the place where, while dreaming, he heard that it lay unburied, and he was admonished and asked to bury it when found; and because he finds this to be true, he believes that the dead are buried so that their souls may pass to the places from which, as he dreamed, the souls of the unburied are barred by the law of the underworld. Does not someone who believes this stray very far from the path of truth?

But human weakness is such that when someone sees a dead person in sleep he thinks he sees that person's soul, whereas when he dreams in the same way of a living person he has no doubt that it was neither his soul nor his body but a likeness of the man that appeared to him; as if the likenesses, not the souls, of dead people, who likewise do not know it, could not appear in the same way to sleepers. Certainly, when we were at Milan, we heard that when a debt was being demanded of a certain man, on the production of his deceased father's bond, a debt which, without the son's knowledge, the father had already paid, the man began to be very gravely distressed and to wonder that his father on his deathbed had not told him what he owed, since he had even made a will. Then, when he was exceedingly anxious, that same father of his appeared to him in sleep and showed him where the receipt was by which that bond had been cancelled. When the young man found it and produced it, he not only fended off the false claim of the debt but also got back his father's written bond, which the father had not got back when the money was paid. Here, surely, it is thought that the man's soul took care for his son and came to him as he slept, to free him from great trouble by teaching him what he did not know. But at almost the very same time that we heard this, that is, while we were living at Milan, Eulogius, a teacher of rhetoric at Carthage who had been my pupil in that same art, as he himself told me after we returned to Africa, was lecturing to his pupils on Cicero's books on rhetoric; going over the reading that he was to give the next day, he came upon an obscure passage, and not understanding it he could hardly sleep for worry. That night, as he dreamed, I explained to him what he did not understand; or rather not I, but my image, without my knowing it, while I, so far away across the sea, was doing or dreaming something else and caring nothing at all about his cares. How these things happen I do not know; but however they happen, why do we not believe that it happens in the same way that someone sees a dead person in sleep as it happens that he sees a living one? In both cases, surely, neither knows nor cares who dreams of their images, or where, or when.

Like dreams, moreover, are some of the visions of waking people whose senses are disturbed, such as the delirious or those raving in any way. For they too talk to themselves as if they were really talking to people present, and ⟨talk⟩ with the absent as well as the present, whose images they see, whether of the living or of the dead. But just as those who are alive do not know that they are seen by them and converse with them (for they are not really present themselves, nor do they themselves converse, but people with disturbed senses undergo such imaginary visions), in the same way those who have departed from this life are seen as if present by people so affected, although they are absent and know nothing at all of whether anyone sees them in imagination.