Rightly does Plutarch [say], in [the life of] Camillus: “War is a savage thing, and drags with it a heap of injuries and violence.” Yet there are, for good men, certain laws of war. For one must not so press toward victory that one [fail to] decline the name of wicked and impious deeds. And therefore, that I may answer more distinctly, I set up two propositions. The first. Speaking generally, the lives of all women in war — especially when some city has been stormed, and the victory is now in [one’s] hands — ought to be spared. I. Because war, if indeed [it is] just, is undertaken either to punish the guilty, or to ward off and repel their violence and injuries from the innocent. But, speaking generally and commonly, women are not guilty, nor do they bring violence and injury. Secondly: War is waged — or, [when] waged [by others], is resisted — by the authority of those who preside over Commonwealths, and who, by office, administer the common affairs, whether by counsel or by hand. But commonly women are excluded from the government of Commonwealths, from the courts, and from the dignities. In the Digest, book 3, On Public Duties and Honors, the Emperor says: “The sex itself denies bodily duties to women.” Whence they are wont also to be excluded from fiefs, as Alexander shows…
(col. 793)
…[as Alexander shows] in [his] consilium 30, [and] Decius in consilium 139. Thirdly: the sex is of itself unwarlike, weak, and worthy rather of mercy than of force and the sword. Fourthly: thus the interpreters of law teach — as you will see in Covarrubias, on the rule Peccatum [Sin], part 2; [in] the Relectio “On the Law of War and of the Indies” [of Vitoria]; [and in] Bellarmine, book 3 On the Laity, ch. 15. Nay, even among the Gentiles, Seneca (book 4, ch. 8): “a woman,” he says, “does not take [the name] of enemy”; Statius (Silvae): “the sex stands rude and ignorant of the sword.” Diodorus relates, in book 4, that among the Troglodytes battles are broken off by the women, and it is held a sacrilege to hurt them by any pact. Alexander the Great, in Curtius, book 5: “I am not wont,” he says, “to wage war with captives and women. Let him be armed, whom I am to hate.” Fifthly: behold too the divine law, Deut. 20:13: “When the Lord your God shall have delivered the city into your hand, you shall smite everything of the male sex that is in it with the edge of the sword — except the women.”
II. There are some causes for which, in war, even after victory, it is permitted to slay women. The first is: if the women themselves are accessory to the crime and injury on account of which the war is [waged]. Num. 25: the Moabite women had enticed the Israelites to foul lust and idolatry. On this account war was brought upon the Midianites, Num. 31. But since the Israelites had used the common rule about not slaying women (laid down a little before), Moses, angered, said to the leaders of the army, the tribunes and centurions who had come from the war (v. 15): “Why have you spared the women? Are not these they who deceived the sons of Israel at the suggestion of Balaam, and made you transgress against the Lord over the sin of Peor, whence also the people was struck?” And Moses goes on, in this just and healthy anger, and imposes punishment on the women who had bent them to the crime (v. 17): “Therefore kill all that is of the male sex, even among the little ones; and slay the women who have known men carnally. But the girls, and all the virgin women, keep for yourselves.” Hence too the Poet [Virgil] wisely, when in Aeneid 2 he brings in Aeneas, [amid] Troy burning, disputing whether to take away Helen — the torch and cause of the whole evil — from the midst, says it would be granted to [his] praise if he removed not only the wicked one, but that very wickedness:
“—although no memorable name / [lies] in a woman’s punishment, nor has [such] a victory praise: / yet I shall be praised for having extinguished a wickedness, / and exacted the penalties of one deserving [them].” [Aen. 2.583–586]
As [the poet] weighs this very thing not lightly; and, against Tucca, Varus, and Servius, [it is defended by] Casertanus — moved by their authority — (5, On the Meaning [of Words], ch. 14), by Julius Caesar Scaliger (book 3, chs. 12 & 24), and by Modicius (ch. 4). The second cause is, if, contrary to custom, women should attempt hostile [acts] by hand and arms — as the raging Penthesilea, and the whole [tale] of the Amazons (whatever Berthus, Gentilis, and I-know-not-who-else may say) [is] a fable. And so, in Vopiscus, Aurelian not badly cut down many of the women who fought in male attire, and even led some in [his] triumph. The third [cause]: if the crimes of the Commonwealth and of the hostile parties should be so great, and the injuries so grave, that the death of the men alone would not suffice to expiate them. For women too are a certain portion of the Commonwealth, a certain good of the men themselves; so that, even on account of the crimes of those [men] alone, these [women] can be cut down, for the punishment of those [men]. And this has often been done. Whence, when Germanicus had attacked the German enemies [who were] joyful, and passing a festal night in play with solemn feasts, “Neither sex,” says Tacitus (book 1 of the Annals), “nor age brought [any] pity.” The fourth [cause]: if afterward some danger might rightly be feared from them by the victors. The same [Germanicus], in the same Tacitus (Annals, book 2): Germanicus begged his soldiers to “press on with the slaughter: [there was] no need of captives; only the extermination of the nation would be an end to the war.” The fifth [cause]: if the Lord commands. For to him [belongs] the supreme power — against which nothing can be excepted — of the life and death of all mortals; and indeed the most benign Lord never commands slaughter of this kind without some most grave cause. Thus Deut. 2:34; ch. 3:6; 1 Kings 15. And this cause [at Jericho] is either one of those which have already been set out, or some other similar [one], obscure though it be to the blindness of our minds. For rightly [says] St. Augustine, in [his] Questions 36 & 49 on Judges, and likewise q. 56 on Leviticus: “God’s command is always in place of a law,” even if the reason of the command is hidden from us. But the Lord commanded the Jericho anathema, as was shown above (q. 18); and the older women [were] not free from idolatry and the other crimes which the Lord willed to be punished (Gen. 15); but the younger [women] were a portion of the whole city, and a certain good of their parents; and on that account all were rightly included in that anathema.