One case in itself proves the truth of my contention, disregarding all the rest. Whenever it happens, as it does only too often, that on the same day we are celebrating a feast of the church and the public games, I ask it of everyone's conscience, which is it that collects greater crowds of Christians, the rows of seats at the public games or the court of God? Do all men throng to the temple in preference to the theater, love the words of the Gospel more than those of the stage ---- the words of life or of death, the words of Christ or of a mime? Without doubt; we love more that which we place first. For on every day when the fatal games are given, whatever festival of the church it may be, not only do men who claim to be Christians fail to come to the services, but any who do happen to have come unwittingly, if they chance to hear, while in the church, that games are being given, leave the building at once. The temple of God is scorned for a rush to the theater; the church is emptied and the circus filled; we leave Christ alone on the altar and feast our adulterous eyes on the foulest sights of the vile games. So it is with the greatest justice that the Lord God says to us: |170
"For your filthiness you have been driven out in banishment." And again he says: "The altars of this laughter shall be brought to nothing."
8. At least, you say, this answer can be made, that such things are not done in all the cities of the Romans. True, and I shall even go so far as to say that they are not now being done in all places where they have been hitherto. For instance, no shows are given now in Mayence, but this is because the city has been destroyed and blotted out; nor at Cologne, for it is overrun by the enemy. They are not being performed in the most noble city of Treves, which has been laid low by a destruction four times repeated, nor finally in many other cities of Gaul and Spain. Then woe to us and our iniquities, woe to us and our impurities! What hope have Christian congregations in the sight of God when these evils cease to exist in the Roman cities only from the time when the cities themselves |171 have come into subjection to barbarian jurisdiction? This mark of vice and impurity seems to be a native characteristic of the Romans, an inborn trait, for wherever there are Romans, these evils prevail. Do you think that this is a serious and unjust accusation? Serious indeed, if it is without foundation. But how can it fail to be false, since the activities of which I spoke are now carried on in only a few Roman cities? Most of our cities, you claim, are not now polluted by the taint of these vices; even though they are the same places which were the homes of our old wickedness, still their former indulgences have ceased.
So we must now consider the question, why those cities still seem to be the haunts of the games, whereas the games have ceased. They are still the homes and abiding places of disgraceful vice because all sorts of vile deeds have hitherto been enacted in them. Moreover, the only reason for the cessation of the games themselves is that they cannot be given at the present time because of the misery and poverty in which we live. That they were presented before was due to our depravity; that they are not given now, to our necessity. For the collapse of the imperial fiscus and the beggary of the Roman treasury do not permit money to be lavished on trifling matters that make no return. Let men squander as much as they please, casting their money into the mire; they cannot lose as much as they could formerly, for they have not as much to lose. In respect of our lustful desires and our base pleasures we should certainly like to have more abundance, if only that we might be able to transmute our wealth into disgraceful filth. The amounts squandered in our beggary are an indication of what we should like to spend if we were rich and magnificent. The bane and ruin of our present depraved condition is that though our poverty has nothing left to lose, our sinful souls yearn for more wealth to cast away.
We cannot therefore console ourselves at all on these grounds, that is, by saying that the former extravagances are not now being |172 committed in all our cities. For the only reason for their abandonment is that cities where they were carried on in the past are no longer in existence, or that in the places where such things used to be
done, [means are lacking] to perform them. Thus the spectacles are no longer possible in the cities where they were formerly performed; as God himself said to sinners through his prophet: "The Lord remembered these things and it came into his mind, and the Lord could no longer bear, because of the evil of your doings and because of the abominations which ye have committed; therefore is your land a desolation, and an astonishment and a curse." So it has come to pass that the greater part of the Roman world is become a desolation and an astonishment and a curse.
9. Would that these abominations had only been committed of old and that Roman depravity would at length cease such performances! Then perhaps, as it is written, God would be merciful to our sins. But we do not so act as to propitiate him. We constantly add evils to evils and pile sins upon sins, and though many of us have already perished we seek to complete our own destruction. Who, tell me, seeing another man killed beside him is not in terror for himself? Who can see his neighbor's house burn and not try by every means in his power to keep his own from being set on fire? But we not only see our neighbors burning but know that the flames have already spread over the greater part of our own bodies. What unspeakable evil is this that we are suffering? We are on fire, on fire, I say, and yet we do not fear the flames that burn us. That the evils committed formerly are at last diminishing is the result of our miseries, not the fruit of a true repentance.
This is easily proved; only give back our former prosperity and |173 you shall see at once the old interests everywhere restored. Note this also: as far as men's wishes are concerned, even if the games are no longer actually being given in many places, yet they still exist as of old, for the Roman people everywhere wish them given. When nothing but sheer necessity hinders a man from an evil deed, the mere desire for a base act is as much to be condemned as the action. For if, as I said, according to the words of our Lord: "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her is guilty of the adultery conceived in his heart," we can understand that while of necessity we do not commit disgraceful acts worthy of condemnation, we are nevertheless guilty if we only desire forbidden things.
Why should I mention desire? Most men actually do these things whenever they can. When the inhabitants of other cities come to Ravenna or Rome they join the Roman plebs in the circus, and the people of Ravenna in the theater. Therefore let no one consider himself acquitted on the ground of his distance from the spectacles. All are united in the turpitude of their actions who join one another in their desire for disgraceful deeds.
Yet we flatter ourselves on the uprightness of our ways, the rarity of our vices. So I shall carry my charges farther: not only do men still yield as of old to the pollution of those infamous games but their guilt in this is much greater than before. For in the past the various members of the Roman world flourished unimpaired; the public wealth had made the storehouses inadequate; the citizens of all the towns had abundance of riches and delights, and amid such overflowing prosperity the authority of religion could hardly exercise due censorship of conduct. Then indeed those who exploited base desires found rich grazing on all sides, but there was no lack of wealth to satisfy their greed; no one worried about the public disbursements and expenses, for the cost was not felt. The state indeed seemed in a way to seek an opportunity to squander |174 what it could scarcely continue to hold. Thus the heaped-up wealth that had already begun to exceed just bounds furnished abundance for lavishness even in trivial matters.
But of the present situation what can we say? Our old abundance has deserted us; the resources of former times are gone, and we are in a wretched state, but do not cease our frivolities. Although even orphan wastrels are usually benefited by poverty, leaving off the error of their ways as soon as they have squandered their wealth, we seem to be a new class of profligates, in whom opulence has ceased to dwell, but dissipation persists. The causes of our corruption lie not as with other men in outside enticements, but in our hearts, and our minds are the source of our depravity, so that [we] are not [moved] to amend our ways by the loss of our wealth, but [go on] sinning through love of wickedness.
10. Although I may have shown sufficiently what serious vices the Romans have, from which the barbarian tribes are free, still 1 shall add many points that I have omitted. But before I continue, let me remind you that a fault of any sort which dishonors God should in no sense seem a trivial matter to anyone. It is never permissible to dishonor an illustrious and powerful man, and anyone who dishonors such a one is held guilty in the eyes of the law and is condemned in due course as responsible for the injurious action. How much more difficult of atonement is the accusation of injury to God! The fault of the wrongdoer always increases in proportion to the position of the person injured, since necesssarily the greater the person of the man who suffers abusive action, the greater is the guilt of the man who commits such action. Wherefore we read in the law that even those who seem to have committed only slight offence against the sacred ordinances have nevertheless been most severely punished; to the end that we might know that nothing pertaining to God should be considered unimportant. Even |175 what seemed to be a petty fault became a grave one, inasmuch as it was an injury to the divine power.
What did Oza, the Levite of God, do against the divine commandment, when he tried to steady the ark of the Lord? There was no law laid down regarding this. Yet immediately he took hold of it, he was struck down, apparently not because he did anything in an impudent fashion or with an undutiful intention, but his very service was undutiful because he exceeded his orders.
When a man of the Israelites had gathered wood on the Sabbath, he was struck down and killed by the judgment and command of God, who is truly a most gentle and merciful judge, who would doubtless have preferred to spare rather than to kill, if the consideration of severity had not outweighed consideration of mercy. For one incautious man perished to save many from perishing thereafter through lack of caution.
But why do I speak of single individuals? The children of Israel in their journey through the desert, because they longed for their accustomed meat, lost a part of their number. The desire for meat had not yet been forbidden them, but God, I think, wished to further the observance of the law by the suppression of rebellious desires. He intended the whole people to learn the more easily how earnestly one should avoid what God forbade in his divine writings, since even those acts injured him which he had not yet forbidden by law.
The same people also murmured at the hardships they underwent, and for this reason were punished by the Lord's rods, not because it is forbidden a man to groan at hardships, but because their murmurs were displeasing to God, inasmuch as they seemed to accuse him of causing them too much labor. From this we should learn how much a man enjoying the blessings of good fortune ought |176 to seek to please God, since it is not even permitted to complain of those ills that seem painful.
11. What is the purpose of these examples? What else than that nothing should seem trivial that causes injury to God? For we were talking of the public games, which are truly mockeries of our hopes, mockeries of our life. While we sport in the theaters and circuses, we perish, according to the Sacred Word which says: "It is as sport to a fool to do mischief." So we too, when we laugh amidst disgraceful and shameful sights, are committing crimes, and crimes of no slight extent. Our wrongdoing is the more worthy of punishment for this very reason, that though it seems to be of a most trivial nature, it is really pestilential and deadly in its outcome. There are two chief evils, for a man to destroy himself and for him to injure God; both of these are committed in the public games, where through criminal and shameful sights the eternal salvation of the Christian people is utterly destroyed, and through a sacrilegious superstition the divine majesty is violated. There can be no doubt that the games injure God, consecrated as they are to idols. For Minerva is worshipped and honored in the gymnasia, Venus in the theaters, Neptune in the circuses, Mars in the arena, Mercury in the palaestra, and thus the superstitious worship varies according to the character of its sponsors. Impure actions of all sorts are performed in the theaters; there is wanton luxury in the palaestras, immoderate vice in the circuses, madness in the arenas. In one of these is wantonness, in another lasciviousness, in another intemperance, in another insanity, in them all the devil; nay, in each individual place where shows are held, not merely one devil, but devils of all varieties, for they preside over the places dedicated to their worship. Therefore in spectacles of this sort neither allurements nor vices are found alone. It is sacrilege for a Christian to mingle with this superstition, sharing in the worship of those in |177 whose festivals he takes delight. While such a thing is always serious enough, it becomes more intolerable when either our adversity or our prosperity, exceeding the ordinary measure of our life, makes our acts more blameworthy. In adversity there is double need to appease God, and in prosperity to avoid grieving him. Surely he must be appeased when he is angry, and must not be alienated when he is propitious; for our adversities come to us through his wrath, our prosperity through his favor. But we do everything by contraries.
How, do you ask? Listen. First, if won over by his own mercy ----for we never so live that we deserve his favor ---- if, as I say, at any time won over by his own mercy God gives us peaceful seasons, plentiful crops, tranquillity rich in all good things and abundance increasing beyond our hopes, we let ourselves be so corrupted by great prosperity and fortune, we let ourselves be so depraved by insolent manners that we altogether forget God and ourselves. Although the apostle says that every benefit of the peace given by God depends on this: "That we lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty," the only use we make of the quiet he gives is to live in drunkenness and luxury, in wantonness and rapine, in all manner of crime and wickedness. We look on his goodly gift of peace as an opportunity for licentiousness, and take the quiet given by his truce as a chance to sin more freely and safely.
Therefore we are unworthy of heavenly gifts, who make no good use of God's kindness, and see in the means of good works only material for vice. Hence it comes that the peace which we so abuse itself works against us, and is actually harmful to us, since we use it to our detriment. Is this worthy of belief? We change nature itself by our wickedness, and the good things that God has made as his loving gift to us are turned to evil by our wanton lives.
12. We who are corrupted by prosperity, you say, are corrected |178 through adversity. Long peace had made us unruly, but we are brought back by strife to moderation. In what cases have the dwellers in our cities, who were licentious in prosperity, begun to be chaste in adversity? When has drunkenness, which increased in the time of our peace and prosperity, ceased under the ravages of the enemy?
Italy has already been devastated by many disasters: have the vices of the Italians therefore ended? The city of Rome has been besieged and taken by storm: have the Romans therefore ceased their mad blasphemy? Barbarous nations have overrun the states of Gaul: have the crimes of the Gauls therefore changed in character, as far as their evil habits are concerned? Tribes of Vandals have crossed over into the Spanish countryside: the fortune of the Spaniards has indeed changed, but not their corruption. Lastly, that no part of the world might be immune from fatal destruction, wars have begun to cross the seas, they have devastated and overthrown cities shut off by the waves, in Sardinia and Sicily, the imperial granaries. Having, as it were, cut off the vital channels of the empire, they captured Africa, which may be called its heart. What then? As barbarians entered that land, did its vices cease, even through fear? Or, as even the most worthless slaves are usually reformed for the time being, did terror drive them to modesty and self-restraint? Who can rightly estimate this evil? The barbarians' arms clashed about the walls of Cirta and Carthage while the Christian congregation of the city raved in the circuses and wantoned in the theaters. Some had their throats cut |179 without the walls, while others still committed fornication within; part of the people were captive to the enemy without, while part within the city were captive to their own vices. It is hard to decide which suffered the worse misfortune. The former indeed were captive externally in the flesh, the latter inwardly in the soul. Of the two deadly evils, it is less, I think, for a Christian to endure captivity of the body than of the soul, according to the teachings of the Savior himself in the Gospel, that the death of the soul is much more fatal than that of the body.
Or do we perhaps believe that those men were not captive in soul, who then rejoiced in the time of their people's captivity? Was he not captive in mind and heart, who laughed amid the punishments of his people, who did not know that his throat was being cut along with theirs, that in their deaths he also died? Outside the walls, as I have said, and inside them too, was heard the din of battle and of the games; the voices of dying men mingled with the voices of revellers; the outcry of the people slain in the war could scarcely be distinguished from the clamor of those who shouted in the circus. What was accomplished by this but the hastening of the destruction of the people who chose such a course, though God perhaps did not yet wish to destroy them?
13. These places, however, are far away, almost removed to another world, and seem irrelevant to the discussion when I consider that even in my own country, in the Gallic states, almost all men of high degree have been made worse by their misfortunes. I myself have seen men of lofty birth and honor, though already despoiled and plundered, still less ruined in fortunes than in morality; for, ravaged and stripped though they were, something still remained to them of their property, but nothing of their character. They were so much more hostile to themselves than to alien |180 enemies that, though they had already been ruined by the barbarians, they now completed their own destruction. It is sad to tell what we saw there; honored old men, feeble Christians, when the ruin of their state was already imminent, making themselves slaves to appetite and lust. What are the first grounds of accusation? That they were honored, old, Christians, or in danger? Who would deem it possible that such things should be done by old men even in utter security, or by boys in a crisis, or at any time whatever by Christians? They reclined at feasts, forgetful of their honor, forgetting justice, forgetting their faith and the name they bore. There were the leaders of the state, gorged with food, dissolute from winebibbing, wild with shouting, giddy with revelry, completely out of their senses, or rather, since this was their usual condition, precisely in their senses. In spite of all this, what I have next to say is still worse: not even the destruction of their towns put an end to their excesses. The wealthiest city of Gaul was taken by storm no less than four times. It is easy to recognize the city of which I speak. The first captivity should surely have sufficed to mend the ways of the citizens, so that the renewal of their sins would not have renewed the destruction. But what followed? The tale is incredible. The constant repetition of misfortunes in that city increased its crimes. Like that fabulous monster whose heads multiplied as they were cut off, so also in the most excellent city of |181 Gaul, wickedness gathered strength from the very blows that punished it. You would have thought that the punishment intended to end the crimes of its people acted instead as the begetter of vice. What then? By the daily multiplication of swarming evils it has come to such a pass that the city could more easily exist without inhabitants than any of its citizens could do without crime.
So much then for this city. What of another not far distant but of almost equal magnificence? Has it not suffered the same ruin of fortunes and of morals? For aside from all else, when it was utterly demoralized by the two chief evils common to all, avarice and drunkenness, it finally reached such a state of rabid greed for wine that the very rulers of the city did not rise from their feasts when the enemy were actually entering the gates. God wished to make clear to them why they perished, since at the moment of their final disaster they were leading the very life through which they had come to ruin. I myself saw lamentable sights there, with no distinction between boys and old men. The scurrility and levity of all were alike; all vices reigned at once ---- extravagance, drinking bouts, wantonness ---- all the people revelled together. They drank, gamed, committed adultery. Old and honored men waxed wanton at their feasts; men already almost too feeble to live proved mighty in their cups; men too weak to walk were strong in drinking; those whose steps tottered were nimble dancers. What more can be said? Through all that I have recounted they became so degraded that the words of the Sacred Scripture were fulfilled in them: "Wine and women make men of understanding to fall away from God." For while they drink, dice, rape and play the |182 madman, men begin to deny Christ. After all this do we wonder that men who have long since undergone moral ruin suffer the ruin of their fortunes? Let no one think that such a city perished only at the time of its physical destruction, for the deeds of its people had brought its ruin long before their death.
14. I have told the fate of the most famous cities. What of the many others in various parts of Gaul? Have they not fallen, too, because of like vices on the part of their citizens? All were so completely possessed by their crimes that they did not fear any danger they had foreknowledge of captivity and did not dread it. Fear indeed was taken away from these sinful men to prevent them from the exercise of caution. Therefore, though the barbarians were settled almost within their sight, men felt no fear, the cities remained unguarded. Such was the blindness of their hearts, or rather of their sins, that although doubtless no one wished to die, no one did anything to ward off death. Everything was in the grip of carelessness and sloth, negligence and gluttony, drunkenness and sleep, as has been written of such men: "Because a deep sleep from the Lord was fallen upon them." A deep sleep indeed fell upon them that destruction might follow closely. For when, as it is written, a sinner's iniquity is full and he is due to perish, foreknowledge is taken from him, that he may not escape his doom. But enough of this. I have made my point sufficiently clear, I think, that not even in the time of the greatest danger did the vices of the people come to an end before the actual overthrow of their cities.