Annotatio CCLIII

”Take me up, and cast me into the sea.” — Jonah 1:12

Jerome, in the commentaries upon Jonah, so expounds this saying of the Prophet offering himself voluntarily to death, that he seems to hold it licit, in persecutions, for the sake of preserving chastity, to inflict death upon oneself with one’s own hand.¹ His words are these: “It is not ours to snatch at death, but willingly to receive [death] inflicted by others; whence also in persecutions it is not licit to perish by one’s own hand, except where chastity is imperilled — but [it is licit] to submit the neck to the striker.” Of the same mind Ambrose is thought to have been: for he, in the third book On Virgins, responding to Marcellina his sister, inquiring of him concerning this matter, judges that the deaths of those women who — that they might safeguard their chastity — laid violent hands upon themselves, were martyrdoms; and he demonstrates this by the example of Pelagia, the virgin of Antioch, and of her two sisters, and their mother: of whom she [Pelagia], throwing down first the altars of the idols, slew herself with the sword; but the [mother and sisters] plunged themselves together into a river. But it is worthwhile to set down here the mind of Ambrose — although expressed in a somewhat more prolix narration — both for the elegant gravity of the sentences, and for the sharp little arguments by which he seems to persuade his assertion under the person of another:

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“Now, to [thee] spreading the sails toward the end of the oration, thou askest, holy sister, what is to be thought concerning the merits of those who cast themselves down from a height, or plunged themselves into a river, lest they should fall into the hands of the persecutors — since the divine Scripture forbids a Christian to inflict violence upon himself. And indeed, concerning virgins placed in the necessity of guarding [chastity], we have a clear assertion, since there is extant an example of martyrdom.² Saint Pelagia was once, at Antioch, about fifteen years [old], a sister of virgins, and herself a virgin: she, at the first trumpet of the persecution shut up at home, when she saw herself beset by the robbers of [her] faith or of [her] modesty — [her] mother and sisters being absent, [she] void of protection, but the more full of God — ‘What do we,’ she says, ‘unless captive virginity look to itself? Both [my] vow is [to die], and [my] fear is to die; because death is not [merely] received, but is taken up [freely]: let us die, if it be licit; or if they will not allow it to be licit, let us die. God is not offended by [this] remedy, and faith washes away the deed. Certainly, if we consider the very force of the name — what violence [is this]? a voluntary one? That is the more [truly] violence: to wish to die, and not to be able. Nor do we fear the difficulty; for who is there who wishes to die, and cannot, since there are ways so ready to death? For now I will overthrow the sacrilegious altars, cast down headlong, and extinguish the kindled hearths with [my] blood: I fear not lest [my] right hand, failing, strike not the blow, nor lest [my] breast withdraw itself from the pain; I will leave no sin to the flesh: I fear not

lest a sword be lacking: we can die by our own arms, we can die without the executioner’s service.’ On [her] mother’s bosom she is said to have adorned [her] head, to have put on the nuptial garment, so that thou wouldst say [she was going] not to death, but to a bridegroom. But when the detestable persecutors saw the prey of [her] modesty snatched from them, they began to seek the mother and sisters; but they, by that spiritual flight, already held the field of chastity, when suddenly — the persecutors here pressing, and there [the way] being excluded from flight by a rushing torrent — shut up unto the crown [of martyrdom], ‘What do we fear?’ they say: ‘Behold water! Who forbids us to be baptized?³ And this is the baptism by which sins are forgiven, and the kingdoms [of heaven] are sought; and this is the baptism after which no one falls away. Let the water receive us, which is wont to regenerate; let the water receive us, which makes virgins; let the water receive us, which opens heaven, covers the weak, hides death, renders [us] martyrs. We pray thee, O Creator of things, that the water hold not the lifeless spirit” ### ANNOTATIO CCLIII (concluded)

“Take me up, and cast me into the sea.” — Jonah 1:12

(Ambrose’s narration of Pelagia’s family concludes:) “…or the body; let not the wave disperse [them], lest death separate the corpses of those whose life affection did not separate: but let there be one constancy, one death, and also one burial.’ Having said these things, and having tucked up [their garments] a little, the bosom being girt, that they might cover [their] modesty and not impede the step — [their] hands joined together as though they led choruses — they advance into the midst of the channel; and there where the wave [was] more torrential, where the depth [was] broken off, directing [their] steps thither, no one drew back [her] foot, no one checked [her] gait, no one hesitated where she should fix [her] step, anxious when the ground met [her], the ford dashed against, glad in the deep. Thou wouldst see the pious mother, tightening the knot of [her] hands, rejoice over [her] pledge, fear the chance, lest the flood should carry away from her the one or the other of the daughters. ‘These victims,’ she says, ‘O Christ, I immolate to thee — guardians of virginity, leaders of chastity, companions of [thy] passion.’ But who could by right wonder that there was so great a constancy in the living, since even in death they vindicated an immovable posture of the body? The wave stripped not the cadavers, nor did the swirls of the rapid current disturb [them]; nay, even the holy mother, although void of sense, still preserved the embrace of piety, and loosed not by death the religious knot which she had tightened: so that she might merit — by piety [as] heir — what she had owed to religion; for those [daughters] whom she had joined to martyrdom, she claimed even unto the tomb.”

These things Ambrose: before whom Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, shows himself to have been of the same opinion,⁴ who, among many martyrdoms of holy virgins described in the eighth book of the ecclesiastical history,⁵ persuaded the same by the example — either the same, or a not-dissimilar one — of an Antiochene mother and daughters, in these words: “There was a certain admirable woman, noble by birth, comely alike in beauty and in modesty, who had two virgin daughters, nourished to the rule of maternal modesty — rivals in beauty and likewise in morals, contending among themselves in probity. These, absent for the sake of avoiding the persecution, the soldiers sent for this very purpose compel to come to Antioch; but when, the soldiers urging [them] on, being set in a vehicle they journeyed, the religious and modest mother uses such words to [her] daughters: ‘You know, most sweet daughters to me, in what discipline of God I have educated you: you know that, from [your] infancy, God has been to you father, God nourisher, God instructor; and that you have loved, equally with me, the good of modesty and chastity, so that not even your eye ever — as I am witness to you — was stained with a too-wanton look. What, therefore, do we now do? You see that all this violence studies either to [tear] us from God, or to separate [us] from [our] chastity. Shall the members, then, be prostituted to the public brothels — [members] which the almost public air itself has held unknown [kept hidden]? Nay, I pray, daughters: for neither is [our] faith in God so small to us that we should dread death, nor [is our] chastity so dejected that we should desire to live even with baseness; nay rather, if it please [you], [that] which you hold in all things, follow in this also the mother’s example: let us forestall the impure hands of the executioners, and snatch away [ourselves from] the assaults of the unchaste, and let us condemn, by a pure and modest death, this world, which would compel us to an impure and unchaste [life], and would drag [us] on.’ And when, by such exhortations, she saw [her] daughters kindled to a like purpose, they came to a certain river set in [their] way; where, when they had pretended to have gone down for the cause of human necessity, and the guards had withdrawn a little (natural reverence compelling [them]), their garments being diligently drawn together here and there, they cast themselves into the threatening rapid streams of the river. But also two other virgins, sisters, noble by birth, admirable in life, in the first flower of age, beautiful enough, but more beautiful in soul, adorned more with morals than with necklaces, exceedingly approvable in [their] pursuits, not bearing the violence

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to their chastity by public edicts and laws, plunged themselves into the sea-waves.”

And again, in chapter 27 of the same volume, persisting in the same narration and opinion, he adds these: “I think it not to be passed over in silence concerning that most noble woman in the city of Rome, Sophronia — admirable [in her deed] — whose husband, prefect of the city of Rome, lived under Maxentius the tyrant: who, when he had learned of the aforesaid woman’s beauty (as was his custom), sending the ministers of debauchery, ordered the woman to be brought to him; she referred the matter to [her] husband, who, when he had discovered [it], revolving much with himself, at last groaning more deeply, ‘And what,’ he says, ‘shall we do, by which these things must either be tolerated, or [our] life laid down?’ Then she, when she saw [her] husband terrified by fear of death [seeming] to have betrayed her chastity, ‘A little while,’ she says, ‘wait, [ye] who were sent, until, composed as is fitting, and adorned, I may come forth.’ Thereupon, having entered [her] chamber, when first, on bended knees, she had prayed, as one about to immolate her chastity to God, she transfixed [her] breast and vitals with a seized dagger — sending, by the maidservants standing by, messengers of this sort to the tyrant: ‘Such,’ she says, ‘is the woman that would please the tyrant.’” Thus far Eusebius; whose opinion the whole Church of the Christians willingly seems to embrace — [the Church] which decreed for the aforesaid virgins, in testimony of [their] precious death, the perpetual honors of martyrdom.

But Augustine, in the first book On the City of God, treating this argument with a long discourse, established that there is absolutely no case in which it is licit to lay hands on oneself,⁶ but [that] he becomes so much the more guilty who kills himself, as he was the more innocent in that cause for which he thought he must kill himself. But if thou say that this is licit, lest the integrity of virginity and chastity be lost, he responds that the chastity of the body, the chastity of the Soul remaining, is not lost:⁷ because, since the chastity of the Soul is a virtue which is not numbered among the goods of the body (as are health and beauty), it follows that, the body of the woman being oppressed and violated, [the woman] whose mind remains incorrupt, her chastity does not perish. Accordingly, she who kills herself, that she may avoid the violence of another’s lust, chooses a greater crime, that she may avoid a lesser sin. Finally, meeting those who opposed to him the aforesaid examples of holy women, he thus speaks in chapter 26 of the same book: “But certain holy women, they say, in time of persecution — that they might escape the persecutors of their chastity — threw themselves into a river to be swept away and killed, and in this manner departed; and their martyrdoms in the Catholic Church are celebrated with most thronged veneration. Concerning these I dare judge nothing rashly. For whether the Church, by certain trustworthy testimonies, so honors their memory [as] the divine authority may have persuaded [it], I know not; and it could be that it is so. For what if they did this not humanly deceived, but divinely commanded — not erring, but obeying? — as concerning Samson⁸ it is not licit for us to believe otherwise. When, moreover, God commands, and signifies himself to command without any ambiguities, who shall call obedience into crime? who shall accuse the dutifulness of piety?” Thus far Augustine; from which, inferring that the voluntary deaths of these virgins were peculiar economies [dispensations] of the divine will — not to be imitated by all, but by those only to whom it was singularly commanded by the certain and undoubted command of the Holy Spirit. See what we have written concerning Razias [Razis], killing himself, in book 8, in the confutation of the 12th heresy, argument 6.