Annotatio XCII
”I will not take anything of all that is thine.” — Genesis 14:23
Ambrose, in the first book On Abraham, chapter 3, explaining this, makes booty licit to soldiers in these words: “When booty is in the power of the victor, military discipline requires that all things be kept for the king.”1 This passage St. Thomas annotated, as opposing the opinion of Augustine, who in the book On the Words of the Lord according to Matthew, sermon 19, forbids booty to soldiers, saying: “To be a soldier is not a sin; but to be a soldier for the sake of booty is a sin.”2 Removing this dissonance, the same author [Aquinas], in the Secunda Secundae, question 66, article 8, says that Ambrose’s opinion is true when the war has been just — in which whatever is acquired by arms becomes [the victor’s] by the best right; yet the victors can, in this just acquisition of booty, sin through greed for booty and a depraved intention of mind — namely when they fight principally not for the sake of justice, but for the sake of certain [gains]. In which sense Augustine judged it a sin to serve as a soldier for the sake of booty.