Question Two
Whether it is lawful to desire death
It is doubted how many are the respects under which death occurs as something to be desired under the character of good.
To this it is answered that death occurs as something to be desired under the character of good in four ways, and conversely it occurs as something to be fled under the character of evil in the same number of ways.
First, death occurs as something to be desired under the character of good insofar as it is considered as the privation of every misery and punishment which someone possesses here or fears he will possess. Under this consideration, some kill themselves on account of the miseries which they presently suffer; others do so lest they fall into the miseries which they see threatening close at hand.
In this manner Blessed Augustine says in Book I of The City of God, chapter 16, that certain Christian women, at the time of persecution, threw themselves naked into a river and died in that manner so that they might escape those who pursued their chastity. Certain persons thought that they ought to be venerated among the martyrs, concerning which Augustine wishes to define nothing rashly.
But certainly those wretched persons who kill themselves in this way have so corrupted the judgment of reason that, finding no way to be freed from the evil—sometimes a small one—which they suffer, they take refuge in nonbeing through death, inflicting it upon themselves as though it were a liberator from all evils. According to the truth, this is the invention, for the sake of a temporal evil, of the most cruel punishment of perpetual damnation. This is certain to those upon whom the truth of the Christian religion has shone, because, although the human being ceases to exist and to suffer here, nevertheless the soul remains, to be subjected to eternal torments through this crime; and moreover after death in soul and body. Thus such persons do not escape the evil which they seek to escape, but fall into one much greater.
For this reason Lactantius said in Book VI, chapter 21, of the Institutions:
Nothing is more criminal than to offer one’s head to death voluntarily. For if a murderer is wicked because he is an extinguisher of a human being, he who kills himself is bound by the same crime because he kills a human being; indeed, this deed must be judged even greater. Its punishment is subject to God alone. For just as we did not come into this life by our own will, so we must depart again from this dwelling of the body—which has been assigned to us to guard—at the command of the same one who brought us into this body to dwell for so long, until he orders us to be sent forth.
These are his words.
Second, death occurs under the character of good insofar as death is the way to immortal life, which is better than the present life. For according to the common law, one who has once died will not die again, since all will rise to immortality.
I said “according to the common law” because, although according to that common law of nature it has been established for human beings to die once, as the Apostle says in Hebrews 9, nevertheless many human beings have died so that they might once be raised from death to their former life, such as Lazarus and Trajan. But I have not yet read that anyone died three times.
Therefore no human being ever reaches or will reach immortal life except through the mediation of death. No one has been or ever will be transferred immediately from this life to another life of perpetual happiness or unhappiness. No one has ever descended alive into hell, just as no one who had not first died ever ascended into heaven.
Similarly, under this consideration, certain persons eager for immortality, deceived concerning the quality of the state of the future life, killed themselves. Cleombrotus, a disciple of Plato, did this in fact. Concerning him it is related, as Blessed Augustine says in Book I of The City of God, chapter 22, that, after reading Plato’s book On the Immortality of the Soul, he threw himself headlong from a wall so that he might depart from this life to the one he believed to be better—and did wickedly. For Pythagoras forbids one to depart from the guard and station of life without the command of the commander, that is, God, as Cicero says in the book On Friendship.
Third, death occurs under the character of good insofar as, for this or that cause, it shows someone who dies voluntarily to be just or renders him worthy of praise or reward.
Under this consideration, again, certain persons killed themselves. Among them was that Roman woman Lucretia, concerning whom Blessed Augustine says in Book I of The City of God, chapter 19, that, having been violated by Tarquin, she killed herself. For she was ashamed of another’s turpitude committed in her, even though not with her; and the Roman woman, excessively eager for praise, feared that, if she lived, she would be thought to have suffered willingly what she suffered violently. Hence before the eyes of human beings, to whom she could not demonstrate her conscience, she thought that she must apply that punishment as a witness of her mind.
The following epitaph for Lucretia is said to have been composed by Ovid:
When chaste Lucretia pierced her breast with the sword
And a torrent of blood went forth, she said:
“Let witnesses go before me that I did not favor the tyrant:
Blood before my husband, my spirit before the gods.”
How well, brought forth for me, may they speak after death,
The one among the shades, the other among those above.
Under this consideration, certain persons also have not feared to expose themselves to death for human praise, so that they might thus be proclaimed steadfast and brave: some in deeds of war, such as the Caesars and so forth; some in frivolous assertions, such as Jews, heretics, and other unbelievers.
Others, however, have intrepidly exposed themselves to death not in this manner for their own praise, but for the glory of God and their own eternal happiness, as did all the holy martyrs.
Fourth, death occurs under the character of good insofar as it removes useless and superfluous human beings, especially when it removes perverse human beings and troublers of the commonwealth, such as robbers, thieves, tyrants, and those like them. They are customarily removed from the midst of the living by those who preside civilly as judges, by the punishment of death established in human laws, just as under divine laws death was formerly to be inflicted upon diverse kinds of wicked human beings, as is evident throughout the course of the Mosaic Law.
These things are from Henry of Hesse upon Genesis.
Addition
On how someone can undergo death with the intention of pleasing God, see Bonaventure, Book III, distinction 30, question 2, and Biel in the sermon on Saint Bartholomew.
But it is lawful for no one to lay hands upon himself. Therefore those who procured death for themselves are condemned, such as Laurentianus the Florentine, who, without any bodily discomfort and without an evident cause of disease, threw himself into a well, according to Caelius and Crinitus.
In the same manner Petrus Leonis, a man excellent in philosophy and of distinguished prudence, extinguished himself. So also did the emperor Galenus, whose genitals were gradually putrefying and who, out of weariness with life, opened his side with a sword, as Baptista Egnatius the Venetian bears witness. Very many others who brought death upon themselves are enumerated by Johannes Ravisius.