Death and burial in the early church

Death, the state of the soul after death, grief, and burial of the dead. Part of Eschatology.

5 Ezra 2.23Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century
Gospel of Peter (Akhmim fragment) 24Anonymous · ca. 100–200 · Joseph washes, wraps and buries the Lord in his own tomb.
Acts of John 65Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · John comforts Andronicus at Drusiana's death.
Acts of John 114Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · John ends his prayer, lies down in the grave, and dies in peace.
Sentences of Sextus 321Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Do not yourself become the cause of your death; but if someone wants to strip you of the body, do not be indignant.
Sentences of Sextus 322Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · If someone unjustly drives a wise man out of the body, in his wickedness he does him a kindness, for he is released as from bonds.
Sentences of Sextus 323Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Fear of death saddens a man because of the ignorance of the soul.
Sentences of Sextus 397Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Death does not destroy the soul, but an evil life does.
Sentence 320 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · To be weighed down by the tent of your soul is arrogant; but to be able to lay it aside gently when one must is blessed.
Sentence 323 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Fear of death grieves a person through the soul's inexperience.
To Autolycus 2.26Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Expulsion from paradise was a merciful discipline; death breaks the human being like a flawed vessel so that he may be remade whole at the resurrection.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 16Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · Human continuance is uneven, interrupted by sleep and by death; as waking life after sleep is the same life, so is the life after death and resurrection.
Martyrdom of Peter (Greek Acts of Peter) 10Anonymous · ca. 180–200 · Peter gives thanks to Christ with the silent voice of the spirit and dies; Marcellus embalms his body and is rebuked in a vision for his lavish care of the dead.
Fragment 5Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd–early 3rd century · On Job 1:21: Job departs naked not of property but of sin; the newborn's wailing and swaddling foreshadow death, man alone is born naked so that need may teach him wisdom and the arts, and Job, stripped of everything, gave thanks.
Against Heresies 1.21.5Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Some 'redeem' the dying with oil and water and give them formulas to escape the powers and the Demiurge after death.
Against Heresies 3.23.7Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The seed of the woman, Mary’s son, treads on the serpent; when Adam receives life again, death, the last enemy, is abolished.
Against Heresies 5.31.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · As Christ stayed among the dead until the third day and then rose bodily, so the souls of the faithful wait in an invisible place until the resurrection of their bodies.
On Patience 9Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Christians should not grieve impatiently for the dead, since, believing in the resurrection, they know that death is only a departure to Christ, whom they too will soon follow.
Acts of Thomas 160Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · In the Martyrdom, Thomas, returning to prison, takes leave of Tertia, Mygdonia, and Marcia, calling his coming death a release from the body.
Against the Greeks 1Hippolytus of Rome · 3rd century (disputed) · Hades holds the souls of the righteous in light at Abraham's bosom and the unrighteous near Gehenna, separated by a great chasm, until the judgment.
On the Raising of Lazarus (homily), part 1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–235 · The first part of a homily on the raising of Lazarus: the preacher apologizes for yesterday's lapse of memory, praises the illness and death of Lazarus as occasions of faith, and shows Christ both man and God.
Arabic Pentateuch fragment XXVIIHippolytus of Rome · unknown (transmitted in a medieval Arabic catena) · The catena tells how Moses viewed the promised land from Nebo, charged Joshua, gave the law to the Levites to be read at the feast of tabernacles, and died and was buried by the angels.
Pistis Sophia 103Anonymous · 3rd century
Against Marcion 4.34Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Tertullian argues that Christ's saying on divorce and remarriage forbids putting away a wife in order to marry another, allows divorce for adultery as Moses did, and was aimed at Herod's unlawful marriage; the parable of the rich man and Lazarus likewise upholds Moses and the prophets.
On the Soul 43Tertullian · ca. 210 · Sleep is natural, a rest for the body but not the soul; God made it an image of death and of resurrection, as Adam's sleep prefigured Christ's death and the church born from his side.
On the Soul 50Tertullian · ca. 210 · Death is the debt of nature for all; Menander's claim that his baptism exempts from death is refuted, for even Enoch and Elijah will die, and the apostle John died.
On the Soul 51Tertullian · ca. 210 · Death separates the whole soul from the body at once; reports of corpses that seem to move are signs from God, not proof that part of the soul remains.
On the Soul 52Tertullian · ca. 210 · Death is not natural to man but the result of sin; every death, even a peaceful one, is a violent tearing apart of soul and body.
On the Soul 53Tertullian · ca. 210 · In a slow death the soul only seems to decline because its bodily instruments fail; at the moment of release it sees clearly and perceives, from the angel who summons it, what awaits it.
On the Soul 56Tertullian · ca. 210 · Neither the unburied nor those who die young or violently linger on earth; every soul goes at once to the underworld and remains at the age it died until the resurrection.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 18Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The phrase “resurrection of the dead” itself points to the flesh: only what falls can rise, and it is the body, not the soul, that falls in death and is buried.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 54Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Paul’s “swallowed up by life” means that the mortal flesh is taken into and clothed with immortality, not destroyed; it is death that is swallowed up for destruction.
On First Principles 3.6.5Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The last enemy, death, will be destroyed not in its substance, which God made, but in its hostile will; so too the flesh is changed by death, not annihilated, and rises again.
Fragments on Genesis, column 99Origen · ca. 220-254 · Short catena notes: the trees of paradise are not perceptible; Eden means “delight”; Gihon and Cush; paradise is the church, and death follows sin naturally, not as God's contrivance.
Fragments on Luke, column 341Origen · ca. 220-254 · Those who "will not taste death" are those fed on Christ the living bread, and Scripture distinguishes degrees of spiritual death.
PG 12:1175 (Ps 6 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · On Ps 6:4–8: God turns and rescues the soul; in death, God’s enemy, there is no remembrance of him; the weary groaning and the bed washed with tears (applied to the chaste who weep over past sins); anger blinds the mind; demons always work lawlessness, humans sometimes, angels never.
Commentary on John 20.363Origen · ca. 230–248 · There is indifferent life and death, and there is true life in Christ, whose enemy is the evil death of sin.
Commentary on John 20.364Origen · ca. 230–248 · This is the death Paul describes in Romans 5, which reigned from Adam until Christ.
Commentary on John 20.365Origen · ca. 230–248 · It is the same death that entered through sin and will be destroyed last.
Commentary on John 20.367Origen · ca. 230–248 · Whoever keeps Christ's word will never see this death.
Commentary on John 20.371Origen · ca. 230–248 · The one who will not see death is the one who keeps Christ's word.
Commentary on John 20.374Origen · ca. 230–248 · Those who grow careless in keeping the word see death through their own fault.
Commentary on John 20.376Origen · ca. 230–248 · Seeing death blinds the soul's eye, which then needs Christ to open it.
Commentary on John 20.413Origen · ca. 230–248 · The Jews dropped to the lower sense; perhaps death can also be heard, smelled, and touched, as life is by the apostles.
Homily on Luke 15Origen · ca. 233–250 · Simeon, led by the Spirit, held the Christ who alone frees from the prison of the body, so that he could depart in peace; whoever comes to the church in the Spirit may likewise take Jesus in his arms.
On the Witch of Endor 4Origen · ca. 240 · Origen answers that the narrator of Scripture, the Holy Spirit, says plainly that the woman saw Samuel, that Saul “knew” it was Samuel, and that Samuel spoke, foretelling truthfully God's transfer of the kingdom, which a demon could not do.
Instructions 2.32Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · Christians should not mourn their dead children with pagan display but pray for them, trusting the resurrection, as Abraham gave up Isaac without lamenting.
Instructions 2.33Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · A servant of God should not seek a showy funeral, which cannot help the dead.
Metaphrase of Ecclesiastes 3Gregory Thaumaturgus · 3rd century · Paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 3: a time for everything; God's works are fixed and he will judge; man seems no better than the beasts.
Metaphrase of Ecclesiastes 9Gregory Thaumaturgus · 3rd century · Paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 9: the speaker rejects as error the view that all end alike and that pleasure is the only good; wisdom is mightier than power.
To Theopompus on the Impassibility and Passibility of God, section 11Gregory Thaumaturgus · if authentic, ca. 240-275 · God's entry into death shows not weakness but his unchangeable power; like a king visiting a prison without becoming a criminal, he entered death without being subject to it.
To Theopompus on the Impassibility and Passibility of God, section 13Gregory Thaumaturgus · if authentic, ca. 240-275 · As the salamander, a mortal creature, endures fire unharmed, so God truly came to death and remained impassible, becoming like mortal men without losing anything of his Godhead.
Against Celsus 5.24Origen · ca. 248 · Origen agrees that God does nothing shameful and gives the soul eternal life; human corpses deserve honorable burial because of the soul that lived in them, and what God makes eternal is the new body raised from the seed.
Against Celsus 6.36Origen · ca. 248 · Origen gives biblical meanings for some of Celsus's phrases, such as death being destroyed and the gates of righteousness, and points out that the tree of life comes from Genesis, not from Jesus' trade.
Against Celsus 6.59Origen · ca. 248 · Those who died in the flood were taken not out of the universe but out of earthly life, for Scripture often calls the earth “the world.”
Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 64Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · The midnight cry is the angels rousing the senses; the wise could not spare their oil because they had enough teaching for their own lives but not to teach others, so the foolish must go to the teachers, and those who put off learning until death are shut out.
Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 138Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · Christ's last loud cry was “Into your hands I commend my spirit”; to commit one's spirit to God in death belongs only to the saints, whom God will raise as he raised Christ; the tearing of the outer veil reveals the mysteries hidden until Christ, while the inner veil will be removed when what is perfect has come.
Commentary on Matthew 12.33Origen · ca. 246–248 · Christ is the life and the living bread, death his enemy and the dead bread; the soul feeds on one or the other through the doctrines it accepts, and those who stand firm in virtue, like Peter and the sons of thunder, do not even taste death.
Commentary on Matthew 12.35Origen · ca. 246–248 · Scripture speaks of seeing, tasting, being followed, overtaken, and swallowed by death as degrees of evil; to see the Son of Man in his kingdom and glory is to see the Word triumph over falsehood and reign within the perfect.
Commentary on Matthew 13.9Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen explains the devil's power of death as spiritual death, holds that the powers of this age delivered Jesus to men, and notes that the disciples grieved at the death but overlooked the resurrection.
Commentary on Matthew 15.23Origen · ca. 246–248 · Baptism, the washing of regeneration, is the prelude to the final regeneration, the baptism of Spirit and fire, when the Son of Man sits on his throne, death is abolished, and the saints share his glory.
Commentary on Romans 5.1Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen explains Romans 5:12–14: the unfinished comparison, sin and death entering through Adam, sin “dead” before the natural law, death’s reign until Moses as a tyranny, and Adam as a type of the one to come.
Commentary on Romans 5.3Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen shows that the gift exceeds the loss, explains over whom the righteous will reign, and argues that the present is a time of war in which Christ prepares his kingdom.
Commentary on Romans 6.6Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen contrasts sin’s wages with God’s gift and sets out the several meanings of “death” in Scripture, showing that the death God inflicts is meant to give life.
To Quirinus 3.58Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Christians should not grieve at death, since life is toil and danger while death brings peace and the sure hope of resurrection.
Letter 4Anonymous · uncertain · A spurious letter consoles a father on the death of his daughter, arguing that Christian hope in the resurrection forbids excessive mourning, since she has gone home to God.
On Mortality 2Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · Christ foretold wars, famines, and plagues before the end; since these are happening, his kingdom is near, and only those without hope fear death.
On Mortality 6Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · Fear of death comes from lack of faith; we would trust an honorable man's promise, yet doubt God's promise of immortality.
On Mortality 20Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · Cyprian has been told in revelations to teach that the Christian dead are not lost but sent ahead, so they should not be mourned in black as the pagans mourn.
On Mortality 21Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · Paul forbids grieving like those without hope, and Christ promises that believers will live; so we should neither fear death nor mourn the faithful dead.
Symposium 9.2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · The law is a shadow, the gospel an image, and the resurrection the truth; God allowed death so that sin might die with the body, which will rise immortal.
Res. 1.38Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The narrator argues that death was given as a remedy, the 'garments of skins' being mortality rather than bodies, so that sin might be destroyed root and all in the body's dissolution and the body raised pure, like a temple freed of a fig tree.
Res. 1.42Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The narrator cites Paul's struggle with indwelling sin to show that sin's root remains until death, and compares death and resurrection to a craftsman recasting a damaged statue or a potter remaking a vessel.
Res. 1.45Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · No one may blame God for the punishment he chose by his own free will; death, like bitter medicine, serves our good, as the song of Deuteronomy confirms.
Res. 2.8Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Paul's 'body of this death' is the law of sin in the members, not the body itself, from which Christ delivers us so that the natural law of the good may be fulfilled; Methodius then pauses before the harder questions.
Church History 7.22.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Christians washed and buried the dead lovingly, and soon died themselves.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 33Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Manes cites John 8:44 and "death reigned from Adam to Moses" for his two principles; Archelaus answers that a death that began in time and will be swallowed up is not unbegotten.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 34Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Archelaus explains why the law is called a ministry of death: it limited death's reign to transgressors, and Christ came to avenge Moses and the righteous when death broke that covenant.
Letter to Zenas and Serenus 18Anonymous · 4th century (disputed) · Counsel on godly grief and on preparing the mind for misfortune.
Testament of Our Lord 2.23Anonymous · ca. 350–500
Divine Institutes 3.17.30Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Epicurus argued that death is nothing to us.
Divine Institutes 3.17.31Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · What is feared is dying itself, not death once past.
Divine Institutes 3.17.32Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The approach to death, with its pain, is what is wretched.
Divine Institutes 3.19.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Some argue that death is either no evil or a positive good.
Divine Institutes 3.19.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Whether death is good or evil depends on the life lived.
Divine Institutes 3.19.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Death is good for the godly and evil for others.
Divine Institutes 3.19.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Some said it is best not to be born, and next best to die early.
Divine Institutes 3.19.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero repeated Silenus's saying that it is best not to be born.
Divine Institutes 6.12.25Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Burying strangers and the poor is the last duty of piety.
Divine Institutes 6.12.29Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Burial must be done because it is humane.
Divine Institutes 6.12.30Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Christians bury the unknown dead as God's image.
Divine Institutes 6.12.31Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Burying strangers is a sacrifice to God.
On the Workmanship of God 4.2Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · God made humans frail so that they could die, since mortality requires a body that can be dissolved.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.8.38Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Simple burial, shared mourning, and purification after death.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.6.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Death is the separation of soul and body.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.10.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Death is either dreamless sleep or a migration; either is good.
On the Incarnation 3.5Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Genesis 2:16–17 threatens not only death but remaining in the corruption of death.
On the Incarnation 4.4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · By turning from God humans incurred the threatened death and began to return to the non-being from which they came.
On the Incarnation 4.5Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Turning to evil, which has no real being, humans lose their hold on being itself and remain in death.
On the Incarnation 5.2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Through the devil's envy death entered, and corruption prevailed over the whole human race beyond its natural force.
On the Incarnation 6.1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Under death and corruption the human race, made in God's image, was perishing.
On the Incarnation 6.2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Death held legal power over humanity by God's own law, which created a dilemma both absurd and unfitting.
On the Incarnation 8.4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The Word gave his body to death for all, so that the law of death was spent and humans might be brought back to incorruption.
On the Incarnation 21.1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Since Christ's death, believers no longer die under condemnation but are only dissolved for a time, to gain a better resurrection.
On the Incarnation 27.2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Once feared even by the saints, death is now trampled by believers who prefer to die rather than deny Christ.
Theophany 1.69Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 1.72Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 1.75Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 3.61Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 3.62Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 15.3Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Only by meeting and conquering death could the Word complete his victory and fulfil his promises; letting his body simply perish would have contradicted his nature as life.
Demonstration 8.23Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 22.1Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 22.2Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 22.6Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 22.7Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 22.8Aphrahat · 337-345
Demonstration 22.14Aphrahat · 337-345
Life of Constantine 4.60.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Constantine intended the church as his burial place, to share in the prayers offered for the apostles.
Oration II Against the Arians 69Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · No creature could save creation; the Son took flesh, died for all, and in his flesh destroyed sin and death, so that we, joined to him, shall be free of the serpent and of death.
Oration III Against the Arians 57Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Christ willed the cup as God while his flesh shrank from it; by bearing this shrinking he took away our fear of death, as the courage of apostles and martyrs shows, and he laid down his life by his own authority.
Two Tractates and a Letter 1Potamius of Lisbon · ca. 350-360 · Potamius describes in vivid, elaborate language the decay of Lazarus's body, Christ's weeping, and the raising of Lazarus.
To the Bishops of Egypt 19Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 356 · Athanasius tells of Arius's sudden death at Constantinople on the eve of his readmission, and urges the bishops to judge the Arians' writings by Arius's own words.
Life of Antony 60Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony saw the soul of Amoun of Nitria carried to heaven at the hour of his death, thirteen days’ journey away; Amoun had once been carried across a flooded river.
Life of Antony 91Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Dying on the inner mountain, Antony charged his two disciples to persevere, to avoid schismatics and Arians, to bury him in secret, and to divide his few garments between Athanasius and Serapion.
Letter 5Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil consoles Nectarius on the death of his only son, urging him to accept God's wise ordering, like Job, in the hope of reunion.
Letter 101Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil consoles a bereaved person: trials test our love for God, and for Christians death is the beginning of true life.
Letter 206Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil hopes to meet Elpidius near Comana and consoles him on the death of a grandchild.
Letters 268, 269Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil rejoices that the exiled Eusebius of Samosata has been kept safe and asks for news; a second letter consoles the widow of the general Arinthaeus, who was baptized at the end of his life.
Letter 300Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil consoles the father of a promising young student who has died, reminding him that all are mortal, that his son died free of sin and has been received into heaven, and pointing to Job's words.
Letter 301Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil consoles Maximus on the death of his wife, praising their harmonious marriage, reminding him that death is the common law of nature, and pointing him to the hope of the resurrection.
Letter 302Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil consoles the widow of the general Briso, reminding her that married people are one flesh, that death is God's ordinance, and that she should find comfort in her husband's memory, her children, and preparation for Christ's judgment.
Letter 306Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil asks the governor of Sebaste to allow some men from Alexandria to remove the body of a kinsman who died there and to help them with the public post.
Against Arius 4.25Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus argues that contraries do not truly perish: death in the world dissolves only the form of composite bodies, whose elements remain, while in divine things there is no death and procession is manifestation, not birth.
Homilies on the Psalms 33.14Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · Basil ends the homily on Psalm 33 (34): the death of sinners is evil but there is a good death in Christ; the wicked hate the righteous because his life convicts them; and Christ redeems with his blood those who hope in him.
Homilies on the Psalms 48.9Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · On Ps 49:14–15 Basil reads death as the shepherd given the captives by the devil, from Adam to Moses, until the Good Shepherd laid down his life, led them out of Hades into the morning of the resurrection, and handed them to the angels; the psalmist's hope that God will redeem his soul from Hades foretells Christ's descent into Hades.
Homilies on the Psalms 114.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · On Ps 116:1–9 Basil teaches that God “inclines his ear” in condescension, hearing even the unspoken groans of Moses and the blood of Abel; the saint calls on God all his days, and in the pangs of death and Hades willingly adds affliction to affliction out of love, or, as a penitent, the hardship of repentance; God's mercy and justice go together; he guards infants in the womb and the humble; and the soul's rest is the land of the living, where there is no death, change, sin, tears or want, unlike this world, where human beings die many times as they pass through the ages of life.
Moral Rules (Moralia) 65Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's sixty-fifth rule: one must pray fittingly even at the moment of death.
Moral Rules (Moralia) 67Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's sixty-sixth rule, that those who struggle for godliness must not be abandoned and must be prayed for, and his sixty-seventh, that those assured of the resurrection should not grieve over the dead.
Letter 141Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · The end of Gregory's consolation to Gregory of Nyssa on Basil's death: only his friend's company, in which Basil is seen as in a mirror, can console him.
Letter 273Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · The end of a letter urging a bishop to fight for the Trinity; then Gregory rebukes a grieving friend for mourning without philosophy, urging the middle way between insensibility and excess.
Letter 321Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · The end of a plea for orphans; then Gregory consoles Gregory of Nyssa on the death of Theosebia, praising her as the boast of the Church.
Letter 381Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory consoles the monks and virgins of Leucadius's community: they should rejoice, and keep his memory alive by copying his virtues in one another; then a short note to Epiphanius.
Tractates on the Psalms 2.49Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Punishment begins immediately at death, as the parable of the rich man and Lazarus shows, while final judgment awaits.
Tractates on the Psalms 51.18Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The faithful dead live to God, who decreed death and can decree life; he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the living.
Tractates on the Psalms 68.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The depth of the sea is the realm of death, as Jonah and Job show; Christ came there and was overwhelmed by death’s storm.
Tractates on the Psalms 120.16Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God keeps the soul's going out at death, to rest in Abraham's bosom, and its coming into the kingdom through Christ, the door.
Tractates on the Psalms 126.15Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The 'sleep' given to the beloved is the death of the saints; resurrection follows when the fullness of the Gentiles and the remnant of Israel are complete.
Tractates on the Psalms 139.11Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Fear and confident joy in the psalm fit Christ, God and man: protected in the battle of the cross, he conquered death and the devil, and Judas gained nothing.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.22Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Wars arise from greed and are permitted by God; death itself is no evil but a natural transition that ends sin for the wicked and begins crowns for the righteous.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.23Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Death, appointed for all, is good, ending the toil of the righteous and the sins of the wicked; the blame for war lies with human purpose, not with God.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.45Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Iron and fire are gifts of the Creator, found by human reason; their misuse is the fault of the user, and death itself, which they may cause, is not evil.
Commentary on Philippians 1.21Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Since Christ is Paul’s life, neither torments while living nor death can harm him, and dying is gain because it brings him to Christ.
Oration 5.15Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Jovian saved the army by a shameful but necessary treaty; Constantius was buried with Christian honours at Constantinople, Julian with mockery at Tarsus.
Oration 7.18Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory consoles his aged parents: life is short, and they will soon follow Caesarius.
Oration 8.21Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gorgonia prepared for death, gave her last charges, and fell asleep full of days according to God.
Oration 15.9Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · After her sons’ deaths the mother gives thanks to God, refuses to mourn them as lost, compares herself to Hannah and her sons to Phinehas, and asks to join them in death.
Oration 18.3Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory asks Basil to praise the dead man, console the family with teaching on life and death, and comfort the flock.
Oration 18.42Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory consoles his mother by contrasting changeable human life with true life in God, calling sin the only real death, and urging her to bear widowhood with hope.
Oration 43.59Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory describes Basil's death, with his last words from the Psalm, his vast funeral attended by Christians, pagans and Jews, his burial among the martyrs, and his intercession in heaven; he offers his life as a living law.
Tractates 1.16.6Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno rebukes Christians, especially widows, who mourn the dead like pagans and then quickly remarry, as if they did not believe in the resurrection.
Tractates 1.16.14Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno explains that the risen will be recognised, since only what is useless in the body is changed, and that death brings the just into rest.
Homilies 4.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Christ's tears are a measure, not a license, for grief; Job and the hope of resurrection teach Christians to bear bereavement and loss calmly and so to rejoice always.
Homilies 17.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Panegyric on the martyr Barlaam, an unlettered rustic who endured scourging and held still the burning incense on his outstretched right hand rather than let it fall on the pagan altar.
Commentary on 1 Thessalonians 4:12–13Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christians who die in faith are not to be mourned like those without hope, since God will raise them with Jesus; only unbelievers are truly to be mourned.
Commentary on 2 Corinthians 5:8Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Trusting God's promise, the apostles would rather leave the body and rest under God's altar until the resurrection.
Commentary on Philippians 1:22–26Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Though Paul longs to depart and be with Christ, he chooses, out of love, to remain for the Philippians' progress.
Commentary on Romans 5:12Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster reads Rom 5:12 “in whom” as “in Adam”: all sinned in Adam as in a lump and are born under sin and bodily death, while the second death comes only by one’s own sins; Christ, one with God, undoes what Adam began.
Commentary on Romans 5:14Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Reading Rom 5:14 without “not”, Ambrosiaster argues that death reigned only over those who, like Adam, sinned in contempt of God by idolatry, while those who honoured God awaited Christ in a place of rest; he defends this Latin reading against Greek manuscripts he regards as altered.
On the Destruction of Jerusalem 5.53Anonymous · ca. 370 · Eleazar persuades the defenders of Masada to kill their families and themselves rather than surrender; 960 die, and only a woman and five children survive to tell the Romans.
Question 34, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · “Good and evil, life and death are from God” means that God judges: punishment is “evil” to those who suffer it, and death is from sin, God being its judge, not its author.
On Virginity 3Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · Gregory, himself married, regrets that he cannot share in virginity, and describes the anxieties of even the happiest marriage: fear of death, dangers of childbirth, widowhood, children’s troubles, and the crimes the law courts reveal.
On Virginity 13Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · Bodily birth leads to death, but spiritual birth through virginity halts death’s advance, as it was shattered against the virginity of Mary; the virgin already shares the angelic life of the resurrection.
Letter 23.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome tells Marcella how, in the middle of their Bible study, news came of the death of the holy widow Lea.
Letter 39.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome laments the death of the young widow Blesilla, praising her faith, learning, humility, and last words.
Letter 39.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome argues that death is universal and that Blesilla has gone to Christ, and imagines Christ rebuking Paula for her excessive grief and self-starvation.
Letter 39.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome answers the biblical examples of mourning, arguing that under the gospel, which has opened paradise, Christians should not grieve like those without hope.
Letter 39.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Paula to restrain her grief for the sake of Eustochium and of her own soul, warning that her excess has given occasion to attacks on the monks.
Letter 60.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome begins his consolation to Bishop Heliodorus on the death of his nephew Nepotian, the young presbyter to whom Letter 52 was addressed.
Letter 60.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome struggles between grief and Christian hope, and addresses death as conquered by Christ, the true Jonah.
Letter 60.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome gives thanks to Christ for conquering death and opening paradise, which before him was closed even to the patriarchs.
Letter 60.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome recalls the consolations of philosophers and the fortitude of Greek and Roman fathers who lost their sons.
Letter 60.7Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome admits that grief is natural, as Christ wept for Lazarus, but asks Heliodorus to moderate it and to hear Nepotian's praises.
Letter 60.13Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome describes Nepotian's final illness and peaceful death, in which he remembered Jerome and bequeathed him his tunic.
Letter 60.14Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome notes the mourning for Nepotian and urges Heliodorus, as a bishop watched by all, to restrain his grief as one who awaits rather than has lost him.
Letter 66.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome, writing two years late, consoles Pammachius on the death of his young wife Paulina.
Letter 75.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome consoles Theodora on the death of her husband Lucinius: Christ has conquered death, and the dead are only asleep.
Letter 77.11Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome describes Fabiola's death and the huge funeral crowds in Rome that honoured her as a penitent.
Letter 79.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome tells of Nebridius's death and describes his two small children, in whom his likeness lives on.
Letter 108.21Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome admits Paula's excessive austerity: even Epiphanius could not persuade her to take wine in sickness, and her grief for her dead children nearly killed her; he insists he writes history, not panegyric.
Letter 108.27Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome turns reluctantly to Paula's last illness, describing Eustochium's devoted nursing and reflecting that without faith in Christ death would make humans no different from beasts.
Letter 108.28Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Paula died peacefully, repeating verses of the Psalms, saying in Greek that all was calm, and signing her lips with the cross, surrounded by bishops, clergy, and monks.
Letter 108.29Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Paula's funeral was a triumph of psalmody in three languages: bishops carried her bier, crowds from all Palestine attended, the poor mourned their mother, and she was buried beside the cave of the Nativity.
Letter 119.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome states the two readings of 1 Cor 15:51 and quotes Theodore of Heraclea, who held that the saints alive at the end will be changed without dying.
Letter 119.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome translates Didymus, who reads 'we shall all sleep, but not all be changed' and explains the moment, the last trumpet, and the difference between incorruption and immortality.
Letter 119.7Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Acacius discusses the other reading, 'we shall not all sleep,' rejects the view that Paul expected to survive to the end, interprets sleep as sin after baptism, and still prefers the first reading.
Letter 119.9Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome translates Origen, who reads 'we who are alive' of those who have put their flesh to death, or of the believing remnant of Israel.
Letter 127.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Marcella lives as one always ready to die, as Plato, Scripture, and even the satirist urge.
Letter 140.9Jerome · ca. 370–419 · On Ps 90:5–6 Jerome compares human life to a dream and to grass that flourishes in the morning and withers by evening.
Letter 140.16Jerome · ca. 370–419 · On Ps 90:12 Jerome explains the Greek mistranslation 'right hand' from the Hebrew for 'our days', and urges remembrance of death so as to live wisely.
Letter 151.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome tells his friend of the death of Eustochium and of his own weakness in old age.
Ancoratus 86.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Pagan funerary offerings betray belief in the dead's return.
Ancoratus 86.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Pagans call on the dead at their tombs.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 59.9.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Repentance is possible only before death.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 59.10.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · After death there is no repentance or merit.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 59.10.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The parable of Lazarus shows no change after death.
On Cain and Abel 2.35Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · The sign on Cain was a kindness inviting correction, yet also a punishment for asking only bodily life; death, which ends sin and suffering, is a remedy rather than a penalty.
On Cain and Abel 2.36Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · For those with good hope, death is a departure: the soul is incorruptible and returns to its higher home; likewise the prophets shared Israel's captivity to keep the people faithful.
On Paradise 29Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Ambrose answers Apelles: the tree of life and the tree of knowledge stood together; God's breath and the tree of life are one gift; and even animals fear death without experiencing it.
On Paradise 35Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Death came not from the tree or from God but from Adam's disobedience, as a patient who ignores a good physician causes his own death.
On Paradise 43Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · "You shall die the death" is not redundant: Ambrose distinguishes living by life, dying by death, dying by life, and living by death.
On Paradise 44Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · To live by life is the life of virtue; to die by death is the death of body and soul; to die by life is to live in sin; and to live by death is the martyr's way.
On Paradise 45Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Ambrose distinguishes further kinds of life and death: dying to sin and living to God, the life of animals, the life of the dead before God, and the death of baptism that is life.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.7.9Anonymous · ca. 380 · Death is not in itself a punishment, since the saints and Christ himself underwent it.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 11Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · After Basil’s death Gregory visits his dying sister Macrina, who first lets him grieve and then begins to restrain his grief by reason.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 13Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Gregory objects that grief at death is natural: all human effort, from houses and farming to medicine and armour, springs from the fear of death.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 15Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Asked what is most painful about death, Gregory describes the dead body and the disappearance of the soul, which no element shows to have gone anywhere.
Homily 5Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–394 · On Eccl 2:12–26 Gregory treats departure from vice as the beginning of the virtuous life, identifies true Wisdom with Christ and vice with the privation of the good, reads “the wise man’s eyes are in his head” of eyes fixed on Christ the head, and answers the objections that death makes wise and fool equal and that eating and drinking are the good.
Homily 6Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–394 · On Eccl 3:1–4 Gregory sets due measure and right timing as the criteria of the good, and reads the seasons to be born and to die, to plant and pluck up, to kill and heal, to pull down and build, to weep and laugh, to mourn and dance, of the soul’s birth through virtue, dying to sin, and present mourning that leads to future gladness.
Life of Macrina, part 7Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380 · On her last day Macrina, freed from fear of death, turns toward the east and prays to Christ, who has destroyed death, crushed the dragon and given the sign of the cross.
Life of Macrina, part 10Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380 · Crowds gather for an all-night vigil; Gregory arranges the singing, and with bishop Araxius carries the bier in a candle-lit procession to the church of the martyrs where their parents lie.
Life of Macrina, part 11Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380 · Mindful of the command not to uncover a parent's shame, Gregory covers the parents' remains before laying Macrina beside her mother; on the way home an officer of Sebastopolis tells how Macrina promised to heal his daughter's eye.
To a Young Widow, section 3John Chrysostom · ca. 380-386 · Chrysostom tells the widow that her husband Therasius has gone to a better life, and urges her to keep his bed untouched by another man and to live as he did, so as to be with him in the age to come.
On the Complaints of Job and David 4.6Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · Like the thirsting deer, David longed to be freed from the body and to see God face to face, for death is gain to the just.
Catechetical Oration 8Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · Death is a mercy: like a potter breaking and remoulding a vessel, God dissolves the body to refashion it free of evil in the resurrection, and the judgment heals the soul; only the Creator could restore fallen man.
On the Life of Moses 427Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · Moses ends his life on the mountain as “the servant of the Lord,” a living death that leaves no grave; Gregory sets out the whole journey as a programme for the reader, whose end is to become God’s servant.
On the Happy Life 25Augustine of Hippo · 386 (November) · Augustine argues that the wise man, whose mind is perfect, is not made wretched by bodily needs, death, or pain, since he avoids what he can and wills only what is in accord with virtue.
Letter 94.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Paulinus praises Augustine's understanding of Melania's restrained tears for her son, who died before giving up senatorial ambition for the monastic life.
Letter 104.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Poverty is never a sin and cannot cause eternal misery; death ends evils only for the righteous, as the better philosophers and Scripture agree.
Letter 127.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine contrasts the great efforts made to prolong this brief and uncertain life with the far greater reason to strive for eternal life.
Letter 140.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Above all people desire to prolong this life; even the devout, though longing to be with Christ, shrink from death and wish to be clothed with immortality without dying.
Letter 140.76Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · That all the virgins slept means that both kinds of believers die, death being called sleep because of the resurrection; they await the coming of the bridegroom, Christ.
Letter 151.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges Caecilianus to break with Marinus, whose crime wounded his own soul more than his victims, for death harms no one whose life was good.
Letter 157.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Death reigned even over those who had not personally sinned because of Adam's transgression; Augustine discusses two interpretations and a textual variant in Rom 5:14.
Letter 158.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Dreams foretold the young man's death and then his father's, who died seven days after him; Evodius asks Augustine to explain such things.
Letter 193.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Enoch and Elijah, who did not die, do not disprove that bodily death is the punishment of sin; God may remit the penalty to some.
Letter 193.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Death entered through sin, so that no one dies except because of sin, even if God spares some from dying, just as no one is justified except through Christ.
Letter 193.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine would welcome correction from more learned interpreters, since other texts suggest all must die before resurrection, and his own writings have no canonical authority.
Letter 199.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that Christ's command to all to watch applies to every Christian because each person's death fixes the state in which he will be judged.
Letter 217.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine rejects the view that God gives or withholds grace from dying infants according to foreseen future wills, since all are judged by deeds done in the body, as Cyprian's On Mortality presupposes.
Letter 263.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine consoles Sapida over her brother Timothy's death: their love is stored safely with Christ, and she should set her mind, as her name suggests, on things above.
Letter 263.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine says Christians may grieve for the dead, as Christ wept for Lazarus, but not long or like those without hope.
Soliloquies 2.13Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Reason concludes that, since truth always remains and discipline, which is truth, is inseparably in the mind, the mind must be immortal, while Augustine voices his fear that the soul may be extinguished like a light.
Homilies on Matthew 20.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Men labor for an earthly future they will not enjoy yet complain of waiting for heavenly reward; the end is near, as the signs show and the days of Noah and Sodom warn, so oil must be gathered now.
Homilies on Matthew 27.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ everywhere answers the purpose behind a request; he forbids the disciple to go and bury his father because nothing may come before heavenly things, and the dead, an unbeliever, would not lack burial.
Homilies on Matthew 31.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ delays so that the girl’s death may be certain and her raising undeniable; he praises the woman’s faith, and at the ruler’s house he calls death sleep, teaching the disciples not to fear it.
Homilies on Matthew 31.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ raises the girl with her parents as witnesses and has her fed, proving both death and resurrection; Christians must therefore not mourn their dead like pagans, still less hire pagan mourners, for death is sleep and a calm harbor.
Homilies on Matthew 31.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Excessive mourning shames the dead, scandalizes unbelievers and contradicts the prayers offered for the departed; the property of the dead should be given in alms on their behalf, and Christ’s death and resurrection forbid lament.
Homilies on Matthew 31.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The dead child has been freed from the evils of life and will be received back in glory; the bereaved, and the widow, are to bear their loss with philosophy, as having returned a deposit to God.
Homilies on Matthew 34.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ consoles the apostles against slander by his own sharing in it and by the promise that time will reveal the truth; he bids them preach boldly, fear only him who can destroy soul and body, trust his providence, and confess him; the corruption of bodies after death is shown to be a benefit.
Homilies on Matthew 53.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ refuses heavenly signs to those who would not believe the lesser ones, rebukes the disciples’ anxiety over bread so as to free them from the food laws, and Chrysostom teaches that every life mixes grief and joy, and that only virtue and a good conscience give lasting joy, especially at death.
Homilies on Matthew 76.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ offers himself to us for everything—adornment, armor, food, home, kinship—while worldly glory ends in bones and dust and only our sins survive to be judged; the sufferings of some in this life prove a judgment to come for those who escape here.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.67.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Speak even in death, as the souls under the altar do.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.52.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · An honorable death crowns a life; better to die to rise than to live to die.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.16.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The end is the abolition of death and sorrow, which Paul worked toward by rebuke.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 40.6.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Christ called himself poor and sorrowful because he grieved for us, not for himself, in order to break death’s sting before the day of judgment.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Fortitude is love bearing the loss of all things, including pain and death, which the soul fears because of its attachment to the body; if lovers of gold and pleasure endure so much, lovers of God should endure more.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Eve is called 'Life' and 'mother of the living' because the soul's lower part, obeying reason, gives birth to right actions; the garments of skin signify the mortal flesh in which lying hearts now hide.
On True Religion 15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine argues that the mortality of the body after sin, though a just punishment, shows God's mercy by turning human love from bodily pleasures toward truth.
Life of Hilarion 45Jerome · ca. 390–392 · Hilarion dies urging his soul not to fear, and is buried at once.
Sermon 17.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Even if the judgment is far off, one's own death is near and uncertain, for we are more fragile than glass; Augustine wants deeds, not applause.
Sermon 19.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine urges a good life without earthly reward, citing recent earthquakes in the East and at Sitifis, after which thousands were baptized; the world is an olive press, and all should be oil, not dregs, before death comes suddenly.
Sermon 38.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The rich young man, afraid of death amid his riches, asked about eternal life but would not move his treasure to heaven; by loving it wrongly he lost it.
Sermon 65.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · As the body dies when the soul leaves it, the soul dies when God, its life, leaves it; mourners speak in vain to a corpse whose dweller has gone.
Sermon 84.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · If this miserable life is loved so much, eternal life should be loved far more; people who ask for death in trouble flee it when it comes.
Sermon 93.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The virgins’ sleep is not the cooling of love, since the wise persevered to the end, but the sleep of death, which all undergo.
Sermon 97.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Mortality, the punishment of sin, should humble us rather than leave us proud like the devil; death is certain and its hour uncertain.
Sermon 97.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Everything in life is uncertain except death, which begins at birth; what follows death depends on what we choose and sow here, as the rich man and Lazarus show.
Sermon 98.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ raised three dead: the synagogue ruler’s daughter at home, the widow’s son on his way to burial, and Lazarus from the tomb.
Sermon 102.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A good or bad death is not judged by funerals or by the manner of dying, as fleshly people think; Christ teaching within the heart shows what it means.
Sermon 109.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ rebukes those who read the sky but not the time of faith; now is the time of mercy to repent, for each person’s end is near, human life being more fragile than glass.
Sermon 109.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Life is the way, which ends at each one’s hour; years are subtracted, not added; so we must agree with God’s word now, and then the judge becomes a father, the officer an angel, and the prison paradise.
Sermon 148.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Ananias and Sapphira died for their lie, not for keeping their own money; their temporal death taught discipline, and Augustine believes that God may have spared them afterwards, as Paul speaks of those corrected by death so as not to be condemned.
Sermon 172.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Grief at the death of loved ones is natural, since death is a punishment from which nature recoils, but Christians grieve with the hope of resurrection, not as those without hope.
Sermon 173.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · At commemorations of the dead we should hope and fear: the righteous will hear “Come, blessed,” the wicked “Go into the fire”; Christ's promise means that believers who die in body live in spirit and will not die forever.
Sermon 173.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Faith in the resurrection distinguishes Christians from pagans; grief is human and Christ himself wept, not for Lazarus but for death, the penalty of the soul's desertion of God; death is so bitter that martyrs' courage is great.
Sermon 173.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christians must grieve, but not as those without hope: the departed soul leaves the body lifeless, yet Paul's promise of resurrection and of being always with the Lord consoles, for Christ too passed through death.
Sermon 233.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Death has died in Christ the head and will die in his members at the resurrection, when believers will taunt death; but it will live on in the damned.
Sermon 277.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Dacian’s rage against Vincent’s corpse could do nothing to the martyr; true health is to live in the body without feeling its burden, which even a healthy mortal body imposes, as its slowness to follow the mind shows.
Sermon 279.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Death cannot be avoided, but eternal punishment can, by living well; Christ’s death and resurrection show both, so believers should confess him without shame, as Paul, who seized in the morning, divided the food of the word in the evening.
Sermon 297.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Death is naturally bitter, which is why martyrs, who chose it rather than deny Christ, are great and are not prayed for but pray for the Church; Peter did not want to die but preferred to follow Christ, and the apostles trod down the thorns for the sheep.
Sermon 299.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Both Peter and Paul were unwilling by nature and willing by devotion: death, a punishment from Adam’s sin, cannot be loved but only endured, and the martyrs are great because they endured it for love of what lies beyond.
Sermon 299.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul too shrank from death: groaning under the burden of the body, he wished not to be stripped but clothed over, so that the mortal might be swallowed up by life at the resurrection, when death’s contention and sting are no more.
Sermon 299.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Bodily death comes from sin, the sting of death; God leaves it even to the justified as a contest for faith, though he took up Enoch and Elijah by special grace to show his power.
Sermon 299.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against the Pelagian claim that death is natural, citing Enoch and Elijah, Augustine replies that their survival tells against nature as much as sin; their fault was ended, and Revelation’s two witnesses, probably they, will yet die.
Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 394 · Augustine answers the use of Deut 21:23 against Christ's call to take up the cross: the curse falls on the death and mortality Christ took on, as Paul teaches in Gal 3:13, prefigured by the bronze serpent.
Confessions 4.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Overwhelmed by grief at his friend's death, Augustine becomes a great question to himself and finds sweetness only in weeping.
Confessions 4.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine asks God why weeping is sweet to the grieving, even when there is no hope of recovering what was lost.
Confessions 4.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine describes the weariness of life and fear of death that followed his friend's death, feeling that their two souls had been one.
Confessions 9.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Nebridius, later baptized, lived and died a faithful Christian and now lives in "Abraham's bosom."
Confessions 9.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Monica no longer cared to be buried beside her husband, trusting God to raise her from anywhere; she died aged fifty-six.
Confessions 9.29Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · At Monica's death Augustine and the household hold back their tears, since she did not die wretchedly or wholly.
Confessions 9.30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine grieves because the life he shared with his mother has been torn apart.
Confessions 9.31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Psalms are sung, friends gather, and Augustine hides his grief and grieves at his own grief.
Confessions 9.32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine does not weep even at the eucharist offered for Monica; a bath does not help, but sleep and Ambrose's hymn ease his grief.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 14.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that death, the punishment of sin, is itself called sin, and that Christ took on not our sin but our death, which was cursed and condemned on the cross.
Letters 2.6Sulpicius Severus · ca. 397–406 · Monks from Tours bring news that Martin has died; Sulpicius weeps and calls his friend to share his grief.
On the Trinity 4.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine explains how Christ's single death and resurrection, in his body alone, answer our double death of soul and body: they are a sacrament of the inner man's death to sin and renewal, and an example of the outer man's bodily death and future resurrection.
On the Trinity 15.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Those who belong to Christ, freed by his blood from the devil's power, rest in peace until the resurrection and will then see clearly why the Holy Spirit is not a Son, a question Augustine admits he could not illustrate adequately.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 28Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Corpses are shunned for their stench, not their deadness, as the use of animal parts shows; the uncleanness of the dead signifies a soul dead in sin; and Christ, no longer under the law after his baptism, was not defiled by touching the dead.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 32Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · God made human nature mortal but did not make death; death entered through disobedience, as Enoch and Elijah, mortal by nature yet still alive, show.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 75Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · At death the souls of the just are led by angels to paradise, where they see angels and Christ, and the souls of the unjust to Hades; both await there the resurrection and the final requital.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Against those who say Adam would have died bodily even without sin, Paul (Rom 8:10–11) shows that bodily death too comes from sin.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Adam's body was mortal by nature but able not to die by the gift of the tree of life; through sin it became not mortal (as it was) but dead.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 9.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Had they not sinned, Adam and Eve, after having children, could have been taken to a better state without death, as Enoch and Elijah were.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · On the day of the sin they lost the condition sustained by the tree of life; their bodies became mortal and subject to bestial desire, at which the soul blushed and covered itself.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 12.32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · After death souls are carried, not to bodily places, but to spiritual places resembling bodily ones, of punishment or of rest; these are real, and the underworld exists, though its substance is spiritual.
Dialogues 3.18Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Sulpicius asks Postumianus to visit the grave at Ptolemais of Pomponius, who died at sea after following another leader rather than Martin; the friends part in tears.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 12.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Death entered through the devil's envy and man's consent, and Christ, the Word made mortal, freed us from death by his death.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 22.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Believers still pay bodily death as Adam's penalty, but now pass by faith from the death of unbelief to the life of faith.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 43.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ promised that whoever keeps his word will not “see” or “taste” death, that is, will not experience it; the Jews mocked, citing the deaths of Abraham and the prophets.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 43.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The death Christ promised to spare us is the second, eternal death of damnation; bodily death is only a departure.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 43.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Many, fearing bodily death, fell into eternal death by worshiping idols; we must fear the death of Gehenna, as the three young men and the martyrs did, keeping Christ's word in faith.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 43.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Abraham and the prophets, though dead in body, live, for God is the God of the living; it was Christ's accusers who were truly dead.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 47.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The soul does not die naturally, but it dies when it loses God, its life, as the body dies when it loses the soul.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 49.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ's raisings are signs of the raising of souls; people labor greatly to put off bodily death but will not avoid sin to gain eternal life.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 49.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Lazarus was asleep to the Lord who could wake him; all the dead sleep until the resurrection, but they are held in different conditions according to their merits, as Luke 16 shows.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 49.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · At death souls receive rest or torment, but all the saints will receive together at the resurrection the fullness that God has promised.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 49.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Faith is the life of the soul: the believer who dies in the flesh lives, and the unbeliever who lives in the flesh is already dead.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 60.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ was troubled not from weakness but by his own power, to console the weak in his Church who are troubled at death.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 1.2Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Against those who say Adam would have died even without sin, Augustine argues from Genesis 3:19 and 2 Corinthians 5 that death came as a penalty and that sinless Adam would have been changed without dying.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 1.3Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Adam in his obedience could have lived long without aging and passed to immortality without death, as Enoch and Elijah have been preserved.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 1.4Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Romans 8:10–11 shows that the body is dead because of sin, not because of its earthly frailty.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 1.6Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Augustine refutes the reading of Romans 8:10 as “dead in order not to sin,” showing that Paul assigns bodily death to the merit of sin and life to the merit of righteousness.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 1.8Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · 1 Corinthians 15:21–22 speaks of bodily death coming through Adam, which confirms the sense of Romans 5:12.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 2.15Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Job's words show that man is born under wrath through original sin, is unclean even if he lives one day, and is accountable even for sins done under pressure or unwillingly.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 2.49Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Adam's sin brought bodily death to all, but Christ's redemption brings resurrection to eternal life, so his benefit outweighs Adam's harm even though believers still die.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 2.50Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · God lets believers die so that faith may be real faith in unseen things, not a desire to escape death; only those alive at Christ's return will be changed without dying.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 2.53Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Death remains after forgiveness for the contest of faith, just as toil and the pains of childbirth, penalties for the first sin, remain for believers.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 3.19Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Romans 5:12 must be read in agreement with the many texts requiring union with Christ for salvation, and in the same sense as 1 Corinthians 15:21–22 on bodily death.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 3.20Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · 1 Corinthians 15:53–57 shows that sin is the sting by which bodily death came; at the resurrection death will be swallowed up and sin, its sting, overcome through Christ.
On the Christian Life 5Fastidius · ca. 411-430 · When the righteous die early they are freed and brought to rest, while the wicked are taken away to punishment.
City of God 1.11Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that the manner of death does not matter to those who have lived well, since only what follows death makes it evil.
City of God 1.12Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that lack of burial does no harm to Christians, since funerals comfort the living and God will raise every body wherever its remains have gone.
City of God 1.13Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains that the bodies of the righteous deserve honorable burial, as Scripture shows, but that lack of burial does not harm the dead.
City of God 13.2Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The soul dies when God forsakes it, the body when the soul leaves it; the second death is the eternal punishment of body and soul, good to no one.
City of God 13.3Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Death is the penalty of the first sin, passed to all Adam's descendants because human nature was changed in him; he did not become infantile, but suffered rebellious concupiscence and mortality, from which grace frees infants as to the second death.
City of God 13.4Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The baptized still die so that faith may remain faith and martyrs may conquer the fear of death; by grace the penalty of sin becomes the martyr's weapon of righteousness.
City of God 13.5Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · As sinners abuse the good law, so the righteous use evil death well; death remains an evil, the wages of sin, even when it crowns martyrs.
City of God 13.6Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Bodily death is an unnatural tearing apart, good to no one; borne faithfully it gains merit and may even win forgiveness, but it remains a punishment.
City of God 13.8Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The martyr accepts the first death to escape the second; after death the souls of the godly rest and those of the wicked are punished until the resurrection.
City of God 13.9Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine probes the puzzle of when one is “in death”: the dying still live, and the dead are already past death.
City of God 13.10Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Mortal life is a race toward death in which all run at equal speed; from birth one is in a sense already in death.
City of God 13.11Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The moment of death cannot be located, and even Latin cannot properly “decline” the verb to die; but by Christ's grace we can “decline” the second death, an endless dying.
City of God 13.12Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The death threatened to Adam included every kind: the soul's loss of God, the body's loss of the soul, and the eternal second death.
City of God 13.15Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Adam forsook God before God forsook him; the soul's death was felt at once in the disobedient flesh, and bodily death followed as the penalty of sin, not a law of nature.
City of God 13.23Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Adam was created with an animal body, mortal only through sin, not a spiritual one; the spiritual body is Christ's risen body, which believers receive now in sacrament and hope and fully at the resurrection.
City of God 19.8Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine says that the faithful love of friends is the chief comfort of human society, yet it brings constant fear for their safety and virtue, and grief at their death, which is nevertheless consoled because they have escaped the evils of this life.
Commentary on Jeremiah 2.47Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Joy will cease in Judah, and the bones of its kings, priests and people will be exposed before the stars they worshipped; Jerome sees the like in the calamities of his own day.
Commentary on Jeremiah 4.39Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Jehoiakim will have the burial of an ass, that is, none at all; this resolves which son of Josiah is meant (Jer 22:18–19).
Commentary on Jeremiah 5.62Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Jeremiah foretells Hananiah's death within the year; the death of the false prophet as punishment refutes those who regard the body as a prison and death as release (Jer 28:15–17).
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.41.9Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Death is no loss to the Christian.
Commonitorium 2.181–210Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · All Gaul burned on one pyre; but beyond such disasters, death comes to everyone hour by hour, as a candle burns down unnoticed.
Commonitorium 2.241–270Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · Death takes parents, wives, brothers and sons out of order, yet men put off thinking of it; happy is he who can face the judgment unafraid, whereas there the powerful and luxurious, whose god was their belly, will stand.
On Care for the Dead 3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–422 · Augustine cites Maccabees and the church's custom of commending the dead at the altar, rejects Virgil's belief that the unburied cannot cross the river of the dead, and introduces a passage from The City of God.
On Care for the Dead 4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–422 · In a passage quoted from The City of God, Augustine argues that lack of burial cannot harm Christians, since funeral rites comfort the living rather than help the dead and God will raise every body.
On Care for the Dead 5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–422 · Continuing the quotation, Augustine says the bodies of the faithful deserve honorable burial, as Scripture shows, but that lack of burial does not make the dead wretched.
On Care for the Dead 8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–422 · The martyrs of Gaul, whose bodies were burned and their ashes scattered in the Rhône, show that denial of burial cannot harm the blessed dead.
On Care for the Dead 9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–422 · Natural love for one's own flesh makes people fear lack of burial, as the story of the disobedient prophet of Judah and the old prophet of Bethel in 1 Kings 13 shows.
On Care for the Dead 10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–422 · God allowed the martyrs' bodies to be destroyed so that fear for the tomb or for the resurrection would not shake their confession, though the brethren grieved that they could not bury them.
On Care for the Dead 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–422 · David's blessing on those who buried Saul and Jonathan praises not a benefit to the dead but the merciful hearts of the living.
On Care for the Dead 16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–422 · The dead do not know the affairs of the living, as Augustine's own mother's absence from his dreams, the psalm, Isaiah, and God's promise to Josiah show.
On Care for the Dead 18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–422 · The dead may learn of earthly things from those who die after them, from angels, or by revelation, and Scripture shows some of the dead sent to the living, such as Samuel and Moses.
On Care for the Dead 22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–422 · Only the church's sacrifices, prayers, and alms reach the dead, and only those whose lives made them fit to be helped; burial is a humane duty and a witness to the resurrection, and burial at a martyr's shrine helps only by increasing prayer.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 109Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Between death and resurrection souls dwell in hidden places, at rest or in affliction according to their earthly life.
The Conferences 1.14John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Each person will share hereafter in the kingdom he serves now; Moses shows from Scripture and reason that souls after death remain conscious and live more fully, and rejects a heretical punctuation of Luke 23:43.
On the Predestination of the Saints 14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 428/429 · Defending Wis 4:11 (“he was snatched away lest wickedness should change his understanding”), long read in the church with divine authority, Augustine shows with Cyprian's On Mortality that the righteous who die early are spared, and that no one is judged for deeds he would have done.
Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 14Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · In Greece Venantius died at Methone and was buried with psalms by Hebrews, Greeks, and Latins alike.
Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 30Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · Dying, Honoratus comforted his monks, neither desiring nor fearing death, and settled all his affairs.
Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 32Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · On his deathbed Honoratus exhorted the officials of Arles not to fear death, to war against the vices of the body, and to despise riches.
Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 34Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · Honoratus died peacefully in his sleep; many had visions of the saints coming to meet him, and the church filled at midnight to receive his body.
Letter to Valerian, paragraph 11Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 432 · Men see death every day and forget it; generations break on death like waves on the shore; those reconciled to Christ, who long to be with him, await the last day without fear.