On Care for the Dead

1I have long owed your Holiness a written reply, venerable fellow bishop Paulinus, ever since you wrote to me through members of the household of our daughter Flora, a most religious woman. You asked me whether it benefits anyone after death if his body is buried at the memorial shrine of some saint. The widow I mentioned had asked you this on behalf of her son, who died in your region, and you had written back to console her. You also told her that her wish concerning the body of the faithful young man Cynegius had been fulfilled—the wish she held with a mother's pious affection—namely, that he should be placed in the basilica of the most blessed confessor Felix. On that occasion it happened that, through the same bearers of your letter, you also wrote to me, raising this kind of question and asking me to answer what I thought about it, while not hiding your own view. For you say it seems to you that the movements of religious and faithful minds caring for their own are not empty. You add also that it cannot be without effect that the whole church is accustomed to pray for the dead, so that from this one may also infer that it helps a person after death if, through the faith of his own people, a place is provided for burying his body where the help of the saints sought in this way may be evident.

2But since this is so, you indicate that you do not quite see how the apostle's saying is not contrary to this opinion: "For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what he did through the body, whether good or evil" (2 Corinthians 5:10). This apostolic sentence warns that what can help after death should be done before death, not at the time when each person must already receive what he did before death. But the question is solved this way: by a certain kind of life something is acquired while one lives in this body, so that these things may help the dead somewhat. And so, according to what they did through the body, they are helped by the things that are religiously done for them after the body. For there are some whom these things do not help at all—whether they are done for those whose merits are so evil that they are not worthy to be helped by such things, or for those whose merits are so good that they do not need such helps. Therefore, by the kind of life that each one led through the body, it comes about that whatever is piously done for him after he has left the body helps or does not help. For if no merit by which these things help was acquired in this life, it is sought in vain after this life. So it happens that neither the church nor the care of one's own people spends its religious effort for the dead in vain, and yet each one receives according to what he did through the body, whether good or evil, the Lord repaying each one according to his works (Romans 2:6). For in order that what is spent may help him after the body, it was acquired in that life which he led in the body.

3That brief answer of mine could have been enough for your question, but pay attention for a moment to the other things that trouble people, which I think need a response. In the books of Maccabees we read that sacrifice was offered for the dead. But even if it were nowhere read in the old Scriptures at all, the authority of the whole church, which shines clearly in this custom, is not small: in the prayers of the priest that are poured out to the Lord God at his altar, the prayerful commending of the dead also has its own place.

But whether the place of a person's body helps the soul of the dead is a question that needs more careful work. First, we must consider—not according to some popular opinion, but rather according to the sacred writings of our religion—whether it matters at all for bringing in or increasing misery after this life for the spirits of human beings if their bodies have not been buried. For we must not believe, as is read in Virgil, that the unburied are prevented from sailing across and passing over the river of the underworld, because, of course, they are not permitted to carry their bones across the dreadful banks and the roaring waters until their bones have rested in their resting places. What Christian heart would incline to these poetic and fabulous inventions, when the Lord Jesus assures us that not a hair of their head will perish, urging Christians not to fear those who, when they have killed the body, have nothing more they can do, so that Christians might die without fear in the hands of enemies who hold their bodies in their power? On this point I spoke enough, as I think, in the first book of The City of God, to blunt the tooth of those who blame the barbarian devastation—especially what Rome recently suffered—on Christian times, and who also throw this objection: that Christ did not come to the aid of his own there. When it is answered to them that the souls of the faithful were received by him according to the merits of their faith, they mock about the unburied corpses. So I explained this whole topic of burial in such words.

4"But in such a slaughter of corpses," I said, "they could not even be buried." Pious faith does not fear this too much, holding to what was foretold: that the beasts that consume them will not harm the bodies that are about to rise, whose hair of the head will not perish. The Truth would never have said, "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul" (Matthew 10:28), if anything that enemies might choose to do with the bodies of the slain could harm the life to come. Unless someone is so absurd as to argue that those who kill the body should not be feared before death, lest they kill the body, but should be feared after death, lest they not allow the slain body to be buried. Is it false, then, what the Truth says: "those who kill the body and after that have nothing more they can do" (Luke 12:4), if they have so much they can do with the corpses? Far be it that what the Truth said should be false. For it says they do something when they kill, because there is sensation in the body while it is being killed; but after that they have nothing they can do, because there is no sensation in a slain body. So the earth did not cover many bodies of Christians, but no one separated any of them from heaven and earth, which he fills entirely with his presence—he who knows from where he will raise up what he created. It is said in the psalm: "They gave the bodies of your servants as food to the birds of the air, the flesh of your holy ones to the beasts of the earth; they poured out their blood like water around Jerusalem, and there was no one to bury them" (Psalm 79:2-3). But this was said to exaggerate the cruelty of those who did these things, not the misery of those who suffered them. For though these things seem hard and dreadful in human sight, yet "precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his holy ones" (Psalm 116:15). Therefore all these things—the care of the funeral, the preparation of burial, the pomp of funeral rites—are more consolations for the living than helps for the dead. If a costly burial benefits an impious man, a cheap one or none at all would harm a pious man. A crowd of servants gave that rich man in purple a splendid funeral in human sight, but far more splendid in the sight of the Lord was the ministry the angels gave to that poor man covered with sores—they did not carry him out to a marble tomb, but lifted him up into Abraham's bosom (Luke 16:19-22). Those against whom we have undertaken to defend the city of God laugh at these things. Yet even their philosophers despised the care of burial. And often whole armies, while dying for their earthly country, did not care where they would lie afterwards or what beasts they would become food for. And the poets were allowed to say to applause on this matter: "He who has no urn is covered by the sky." How much less should they mock Christians about unburied bodies, when to Christians is promised the restoration and renewal not only of the flesh itself and all its members from the earth, but also from the most secret bosom of the other elements into which the scattered corpses have slipped away—to be given back in a moment of time!

5Yet we must not for that reason despise and cast aside the bodies of the dead, especially of the just and faithful, which the spirit used as instruments and vessels for every good work in a holy way. If a father's cloak and ring, or anything of that kind, is all the dearer to his descendants as their affection for their parents is greater, then in no way should the bodies themselves be despised, since we wear them far more closely and intimately than any clothing. For these do not belong to ornament or assistance applied from outside, but to the very nature of a human being. That is why the funerals of the righteous of old were attended with dutiful piety, their funeral rites were celebrated, and burial was provided for them; and while they were still alive they instructed their sons about burying or even transferring their bodies. Tobit is commended, on the testimony of an angel, as having merited God's favor by burying the dead (Tobit 12:12). The Lord himself, who was to rise on the third day, praises the good work of a religious woman and commends it for proclamation, because she poured precious ointment over his limbs and did it for his burial (Matthew 26:12-13). And the Gospel speaks with praise of those who took his body down from the cross and carefully and honorably saw to its wrapping and burial (John 19:38-40). But these authorities do not teach that there is any sensation in corpses. Rather, they show that the bodies of the dead also belong to God's providence, which is pleased even by such offices of piety, for the sake of building up faith in the resurrection. There we also learn a salutary lesson: how great the reward can be for the alms we offer to the living and feeling, if what is paid to the lifeless limbs of men in care and diligence does not perish before God. There are other things too which the holy patriarchs said about the burying or transferring of their bodies that they wished to be understood in a prophetic spirit, but this is not the place to discuss them, since what we have said is enough. But if the things necessary for sustaining the living, such as food and clothing, even when they are lacking with heavy affliction, do not break the virtue of enduring and bearing in good people, nor root piety out of the soul, but make it more fruitful through exercise: how much more, when the things customarily used for tending funerals and burying the bodies of the dead are lacking, they do not make wretched those already at rest in the hidden abodes of the pious! And so, when these things were lacking for the corpses of Christians in the devastation of that great city or of other towns, it was neither the fault of the living, who could not provide them, nor the punishment of the dead, who cannot feel them. This is my judgment about the cause and reason of burial. I have transferred it here from another book of mine because it was easier for me to review it than to express the same thing in another way.

6If this is true, then providing a place for burying bodies at the memorial shrines of the saints is certainly an act of good human affection toward one's own dead. For if there is some religious duty in burying them, there cannot be none when attention is paid to where they are buried. But when such consolations of the living are sought, by which their pious disposition toward their own may appear, I do not see what helps they are to the dead except this: that while they recall where the bodies of those they love have been placed, they commend them in prayer to those same saints, as to patrons, to be helped by them before the Lord. They could do this even if they could not bury them in such places. But the reason why the notable tombs of the dead are called either 'memorial shrines' or 'monuments' is none other than this: they call back into remembrance those who have been withdrawn from the eyes of the living by death, so that they are not also withdrawn from their hearts by forgetfulness, and by reminding they make them be thought of. For the name 'memorial shrine' shows this most openly, and 'monument' is named from the fact that it admonishes the mind, that is, it reminds. This is why the Greeks also call it μνημεῖον, which we call a memorial shrine or monument, since in their language the memory itself by which we remember is called μνήμη. And so when the mind recalls where the body of a dearest one is buried, and the place occurs to it as venerable by the name of a martyr, the affection of the one remembering and praying commends that beloved soul to the same martyr. When this affection is shown to the dead by their dearest faithful ones, there is no doubt that it benefits those who, while they were living in the body, merited that such things would benefit them after this life. But even if some necessity, when no opportunity is given, prevents bodies from being buried at all, or from being buried in such places, prayers for the spirits of the dead must not be omitted. The church has undertaken to make these prayers for all who have died in Christian and catholic fellowship, even without naming them, under a general commemoration, so that those who lack parents or children or any relatives or friends to do these things may have them offered by the one pious common mother. But if those prayers were lacking, which are made with right faith and piety for the dead, I think it would profit their spirits nothing, however much their lifeless bodies were placed in holy places.

7So when a faithful mother desired the body of her faithful deceased son to be placed in the basilica of a martyr, if she believed that his soul was helped by the merits of the martyr, that very belief was a kind of prayer, and it profited him if anything did. And when she returns in her mind to that same tomb and commends her son to God in prayer more and more, what helps the dead man's spirit is not the place of the dead body, but the living affection of the mother stirred by the memorial shrine of the place. For at the same time both who is being commended and to whom he is commended touches the devout mind of the one praying, and not without fruit. Those who pray also do with the members of their own body what suits those who entreat, when they bend their knees, when they stretch out their hands, or even prostrate themselves on the ground, and whatever else they do visibly—although their invisible will and the intention of the heart is known to God, and he does not need these signs for the human mind to be opened to him. But by these things a person stirs himself up to pray and groan more humbly and more fervently, and somehow, since these movements of the body cannot happen unless a movement of the soul precedes them, when they are done outwardly and visibly, that inner invisible movement which produced them is increased in turn, and through this the affection of the heart which preceded them grows because they were done. Yet if someone is held or even bound in such a way that he cannot do these things with his limbs, the inner man does not therefore fail to pray and prostrate himself before the eyes of God in the most secret chamber, where he is pricked. So too, although it matters greatly where a person places the body of his dead, when he prays to God for the dead man's spirit—because the affection that came first chose a holy place, and once the body is placed there, the holy place recalls and renews and increases that prior affection—nevertheless, even if he cannot bury the one he loves where his devout mind chose, he must in no way cease from the necessary prayers in his prayerful commending. For wherever the flesh of the dead lies or does not lie, rest must be obtained for the spirit, which when it departed from there took with it the sense by which it could be aware of how anyone fares, whether in good things or in evil, and it does not expect its life to be helped by that flesh to which it itself gave life, which it withdrew when it departed and will restore when it returns. For it is not the flesh that obtains for the spirit, but the spirit that obtains for the flesh even the merit of the resurrection itself, whether it revives to punishment or to glory.

8We read in the church history that Eusebius wrote in Greek and Rufinus translated into Latin that in Gaul the bodies of martyrs were thrown out to dogs, and the dogs' leavings and the bones of the dead were burned up to the last bit of consumption, and those ashes were scattered into the Rhône River so that nothing at all would be left for any kind of memorial shrine. We must believe this was allowed by God for no other reason than so that Christians would learn, in confessing Christ, that while they despise this life they should despise burial far more. For if what was done to the bodies of the martyrs with such enormous savagery harmed them in any way, so that their most victorious spirits rested less blessedly, it certainly would not have been allowed to happen. So the thing itself made clear that the Lord did not say, "Do not fear those who kill the body and after that have nothing more they can do" (Matthew 10:28), because he would not allow them to do anything to the bodies of his dead ones, but because whatever they were allowed to do would do nothing to diminish the Christian happiness of the dead, nothing from it would reach the awareness of those living after death, and nothing would pertain even to the harm of their bodies themselves, so that they would rise again less whole.

9And yet, from that affection of the human heart by which no one ever hates his own flesh, if people learn that something will be lacking for their bodies after death—something that the custom of burial in each person's nation or homeland requires—they are saddened as human beings, and before death they fear for their bodies what after death will not concern them. So it is that in the books of the Kingdoms we find God threatening through a prophet another prophet who had transgressed his word, that his corpse would not be brought into the tomb of his fathers. The Scripture reads like this: "This is what the Lord says: Because you were disobedient to the mouth of the Lord and did not keep the command that the Lord your God commanded you, and you turned back and ate bread and drank water in the place where he commanded you not to eat bread or drink water, your corpse shall not be brought into the tomb of your fathers" (3 Kingdoms 13:21-22; cf. 1 Kings 13:21-22). If we think about how much this punishment should be weighed according to the Gospel, where we have learned that after the body is killed there is nothing to fear, no suffering for the lifeless limbs, then it should not even be called a punishment. But if we consider the human affection for one's own flesh, the living man could be terrified or saddened by what the dead man would not feel; and this was the punishment, because his soul grieved over what would happen to his body, even though when it happened he would not grieve. For the Lord willed to chastise his servant only to this extent—a servant who had despised fulfilling his command, not out of his own stubbornness, but who believed he was obeying when he did not obey, deceived by another's treachery. Nor should we think that he was killed by the bite of a beast in such a way that his soul was then carried off to Tartarean punishment, since the very lion that killed him guarded his body, leaving unharmed even the donkey on which he rode, and stood by its master's corpse with that huge wild beast in fearless attendance. By this wonderful sign it appears that the man of God was chastised in this life right up to death, rather than punished after death. About this matter the apostle, when he had mentioned the illnesses and deaths of many because of certain offenses, says: "But if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged by the Lord; but when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord, so that we may not be condemned with the world" (1 Corinthians 11:31-32). The one who had deceived him, however, buried him quite honorably in his own tomb and arranged to be buried next to his bones, hoping in this way that his bones too might be spared when the time came when, according to the prophecy of that man of God, Josiah king of Judah dug up the bones of many dead in that land and defiled the sacrilegious altars that had been set up for idols with those bones. He spared, indeed, that tomb where the prophet lay, who had foretold these things more than three hundred years earlier; and for his sake the burial of the one who had led him astray was not violated either. For by that affection by which no one ever hates his own flesh, the man who had killed his own soul by a lie had made provision for his corpse. From this, then—that each person naturally loves his own flesh—it was a punishment for the one to learn that he would not be in the tomb of his fathers, and a concern for the other to provide that his bones might be spared if he lay next to the one whose tomb no one would violate.

10The martyrs of Christ overcame this affection by striving for the truth. And no wonder: they despised what they would not feel after death was completed, since they could not be conquered by the torments they felt while alive. God could certainly have kept the dogs from touching the bodies of his slain ones after they had been thrown to them—he who did not allow the lion to touch the prophet's body any further after it had killed him, and made the killer into a guardian. God could, I say, have kept the dogs away from the bodies of his own people after they had been thrown to them. He could also have terrified the savagery of those very men in countless ways, so that they would not dare to burn the corpses or scatter the ashes. But this trial also had to be present among the many varied forms of testing, so that the courage of confession—which would not yield to the cruelty of persecution for the sake of the body's safety—might not tremble for the honor of a tomb, and so that faith in the resurrection might not fear the consuming of bodies. These things therefore had to be permitted, so that even after such horrifying examples the martyrs, burning in their confession of Christ, might also become witnesses of this truth: they had learned that those who killed their bodies would afterwards have nothing left to do, because whatever they did to dead bodies, they were doing nothing at all—since when all life is absent from the flesh, the one who departed from it can feel nothing, and the one who created it can lose nothing from it. But amid these things that were being done to the bodies of the slain, while the martyrs endured them with great courage and no fear, there was nevertheless deep grief among the brothers, because no opportunity was given to perform due rites for the saints' funerals, nor did the watches of the cruel guards permit anything to be secretly taken away, as the same history testifies. So while no misery touched those who had been killed in the tearing apart of their limbs, the burning up of their bones, and the scattering of their ashes, great pity tormented those who could not bury any of them—because they themselves in some way felt for those who felt nothing at all, and where the dead no longer had any suffering, the living had a wretched compassion.

11It is by this wretched compassion I have described that those men are praised and blessed by King David who showed the mercy of burial to the dry bones of Saul and Jonathan (2 Samuel 21:12-14). But what mercy is being shown to those who feel nothing? Are we to drag back the belief that the unburied could not cross the river of the underworld? Far be this from the Christian faith. Otherwise things went very badly for that great crowd of martyrs whose bodies could not be buried, and the Truth spoke falsely to them when he said: Do not fear those who kill the body and after that have nothing more they can do (Matthew 10:28)—if those killers could do such great evils to them as to block their way to the places they longed to reach. But since this is beyond any doubt utterly false, and it does no harm to the faithful if burial is denied to their bodies, nor does it benefit the unfaithful if it is given to them, why then are those who buried Saul and his son said to have shown mercy, and blessed for it by a pious king? Is it not because the hearts of those who show pity are well disposed when they grieve over the bodies of the dead—bodies not their own—for things which, by that affection by which no one ever hates his own flesh, they do not wish to happen to their own bodies after death? And what they wish to be done for themselves when they will feel nothing, they take care to do for others who feel nothing, while they themselves do feel.

12Certain visions are reported which seem to raise a question that this discussion should not ignore. Some of the dead, it is said, have appeared to the living either in dreams or in some other way, and when the living did not know where their bodies lay unburied, the dead pointed out the places and urged that the burial they had lacked be given to them. If we answer that these reports are false, we will seem to be shamelessly contradicting the writings of some of the faithful and the convictions of those who insist that such things happened to them. But the answer must be that we should not think the dead themselves perceive these things just because they seem to speak or point or ask in dreams. For living people also often appear to living people who are asleep, without knowing that they appear, and the dreamers hear from them the very things they dreamed—that they saw them doing something or speaking. So if someone can see me in a dream telling him something that has happened or even foretelling something that will happen, while I know nothing about it and am not concerned at all—not only what he is dreaming, but whether I am awake while he sleeps, or asleep while he is awake, or whether we are both awake or both asleep at the same time when he has the dream in which he sees me—what wonder is it if the dead, without knowing it and without perceiving these things, are nevertheless seen by the living in dreams and say something that those who wake up recognize as true? I would therefore believe that these things happen through angelic operations, whether permitted from above or commanded, so that the dead seem in dreams to say something about burying their bodies, while those whose bodies they are know nothing of it. And this sometimes happens usefully, either for some comfort to the living to whom those dead belong, whose images appear to dreamers, or so that by these admonitions the humanity of burial may be commended to the human race—which, although it does not help the dead, is still neglected with blameworthy irreligion. Sometimes, however, by deceptive visions people are sent into great errors, which it is just for them to suffer. For example, if someone should see in a dream what Aeneas is said, by poetic falsehood, to have seen in the underworld, and the image of some unburied person should appear to him and speak such words as Palinurus is reported to have spoken to him, and when he wakes up he should find the body in the place where he heard, while dreaming, that it lay unburied—having been admonished and asked to bury what he found—and because he discovers this to be true, he should believe that the dead are buried so that their souls may pass to places from which the souls of the unburied are barred by an underworld law, as he dreamed: would he not, by believing this, go far astray from the path of truth?

13Human weakness is such that when someone sees a dead person in a dream, he thinks he is seeing that person's soul; but when he dreams of a living person in the same way, he does not doubt that what appeared to him was not that person's soul or body but a likeness of the person. As if the likenesses of dead people—who likewise know nothing—could not appear to sleepers in the same way. For certain, when we were in Milan, we heard that a debt was being demanded from a man on the strength of a bond produced by his deceased father, a bond the father had already paid off without the son's knowledge. The man began to be deeply distressed and astonished that his father had not told him as he was dying what he owed, since he had even made a will. Then, in his great anxiety, his father appeared to him in a dream and showed him where the receipt was that had cancelled that bond. When the young man found it and produced it, he not only drove off the false accusation of an unpaid debt but also recovered his father's written bond, which his father had not received back when the money was paid. Here one would certainly think that the man's soul had taken care for his son and had come to him while he slept, so that by teaching him what he did not know, it might free him from great trouble. But at almost the same time that we heard this—that is, while we were staying in Milan—Eulogius, a rhetorician of Carthage who had been my student in that art, as he himself told me after we returned to Africa, was lecturing his students on Cicero's rhetorical books. While reviewing the lesson he was to give the next day, he came upon an obscure passage, and because he could not understand it he could hardly sleep for worry. That night, as he dreamed, I explained to him what he did not understand—or rather, not I, but my image, while I knew nothing of it and was far away across the sea, doing or dreaming something else and not caring at all about his concerns. How these things happen I do not know; but however they happen, why do we not believe that a person sees a dead man in dreams in the same way that he sees a living one? In both cases, surely, the people themselves neither know nor care who dreams their likenesses, or where, or when.

14Some visions of waking people are also like dreams—people whose senses are disturbed, like the delirious or those raging in any kind of madness. They talk to themselves as if they were talking to people truly present, and they talk to absent people as if they were present, discerning their images whether living or dead. But just as the living do not know that they are being seen and spoken with by such people—for they are not really present or really conversing, but people with disturbed senses suffer such imaginary visions—so too those who have departed this life appear to people affected in this way as if they were present, when they are absent and completely unaware whether anyone sees them in an image.

15Something similar happens when people are withdrawn from their bodily senses more deeply than if they were asleep, and are taken over by visions of this kind. Images of the living and the dead appear to them too. But when they come back to their senses, whatever dead people they say they saw are believed to have truly been with them. Those who hear this do not notice that such people have likewise seen images of certain living people who were absent and knew nothing about it.

There was a man named Curma, from the town of Tullium near Hippo, a poor town councillor, scarcely a duumvir of that place, and a simple country fellow. When he fell ill, he was withdrawn from his senses and lay almost dead for several days. A very faint breath in his nostrils, which could just be felt when a hand was placed there, was the only slight sign of life, and it kept them from burying him as lifeless. He moved no limbs, took no food, and felt nothing with his eyes or any other bodily sense, no matter what irritation was inflicted on him. Yet he saw many things as if in dreams, which he eventually related after many days when he woke up, so to speak.

First, as soon as he opened his eyes, he said, "Someone go to the house of Curma the blacksmith and see what is happening there." When they went, they found that the man had died at the very moment when this Curma had been restored to his senses and had almost come back to life from death. Then, as those present listened intently, he said that he himself had been ordered to be presented at the time when he himself was released. He explained that he had heard, in the place from which he returned, that it was not Curma the town councillor but Curma the blacksmith who had been commanded to be led to those places of the dead.

In those visions, then, as in his dreams, among the dead whom he saw being dealt with according to the diversity of their merits, he also recognized some whom he had known while they were alive. I might perhaps have truly believed that those people themselves were there, if he had not also seen, among those dreamlike visions of his, certain people who are still alive to this day—namely, some clergy of his own region. From their presbyter there he heard that he should be baptized by me at Hippo, and he said this had indeed happened. So in that vision he had seen a presbyter, clergy, and me myself—none of us dead yet—and afterwards in the same vision he also saw dead people. Why should we not believe that he saw the dead just as he saw us—both groups absent and unaware, and therefore not the people themselves but their likenesses, just as with places? For he also saw the farm where that presbyter was with the clergy, and Hippo, where he was, so to speak, baptized by me. He was certainly not in those places when he seemed to himself to be there. For he did not know what was happening there at that time, which he would undoubtedly have known if he had truly been there. So these things were seen not as they are presented in the realities themselves, but as they are shadowed forth in certain images of realities.

Finally, after many things he saw, he also reported that he had been led into paradise and told, when he was being sent away from there to return to his own people, "Go, be baptized, if you wish to be in this place of the blessed." Then, when he was admonished to be baptized by me, he replied that it had already been done. The one speaking with him said again, "Go, be truly baptized; for you saw that in a vision." After these things he recovered and went to Hippo. Easter was already approaching. He enrolled among the other catechumens, unknown to us along with many others. He did not bother to tell that vision to me or to any of our people. He was baptized, and after the holy days were completed he returned to his own home. Two years or more passed before I learned all this: first through a friend of mine and his, at my table, when we were discussing such things; then I insisted and arranged that he himself tell me in person, with his respectable fellow citizens bearing witness both to his remarkable illness—how he lay almost dead for many days—and to that other Curma the blacksmith, which I mentioned above, and to all these things which, as he told them to me, they recalled and confirmed they had already heard from him at that time.

Therefore, just as he saw his own baptism, and me myself, and Hippo, —not in the realities themselves but in certain likenesses of realities—so too he saw certain other living people, without those living people knowing it. Why then not also the dead in the same way, without those dead people knowing it?

16Why should we not believe that these angelic operations happen through the dispensation of God's providence, who uses both good and evil well, according to the unsearchable depth of his judgments? Whether the minds of mortals are instructed by them, or deceived, or comforted, or terrified—as mercy is to be offered to each one, or punishment inflicted, by him to whom the church not in vain sings of mercy and judgment. Let each person take what I say as he will. If the souls of the dead were present in the affairs of the living, and they themselves spoke to us when we see them in dreams—to say nothing of others—my pious mother would not desert me on any night, she who followed me by land and sea so that she might live with me. Far be it that she became cruel in a happier life, to such a degree that when something troubles my heart she would not console her grieving son, whom she loved uniquely, whom she never wanted to see sorrowful. But surely what the holy psalm sounds forth is true: "For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord has taken me up" (Psalm 27:10). If therefore our parents have forsaken us, how are they present in our cares and affairs? But if parents are not present, who are the other dead who know what we are doing or suffering? The prophet Isaiah says: "For you are our Father, because Abraham did not know us, and Israel did not recognize us" (Isaiah 63:16). If such great patriarchs did not know what was happening to the people begotten from them—the very people promised from their stock to those believing in God—how do the dead mix themselves into the affairs and actions of the living, to know and help them? How do we say that those who died before the evils came which followed their death were spared, if even after death they feel whatever happens in the calamity of human life? Or perhaps we say these things in error, and think those are at rest whom the restless life of the living disturbs? What then is this, that God promised the most pious king Josiah as a great benefit that he would die before seeing the evils that threatened to come upon that place and people? These are the words of God: "Thus says the Lord God of Israel: My words which you have heard, and you feared before my face when you heard what I spoke about this place and those who dwell in it, that it should be deserted and be under a curse, and you tore your garments and wept in my sight, and I have heard—says the Lord of hosts. Not so: behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you shall be gathered in peace; and your eyes shall not see all the evils which I am bringing upon this place and those who dwell in it" (2 Kings 22:19-20). Terrified by God's threats, he had wept and torn his garments; and he is made secure from all future evils by his hastening death, because he would rest in peace in such a way that he would not see all those things. There, then, are the spirits of the dead, where they do not see whatever is done or happens in this life of human beings. How then do they see their tombs or their bodies, whether they lie cast aside or buried? How are they present in the misery of the living, when either they themselves suffer their own evils, if they have contracted such deserts, or they rest in peace, as was promised to this Josiah, where they endure no evils either by suffering or by compassion—freed from all the evils which, while they lived here, they endured by suffering and by compassion?

17Someone may say: if the dead have no concern for the living, how is it that the rich man who was being tormented in the underworld asked father Abraham to send Lazarus to his five brothers who were not yet dead, to warn them, so that they would not also come into that same place of torments? But surely it does not follow that because that rich man said this, he knew what his brothers were doing or suffering at that time. He had concern for the living even though he had no idea what they were doing, just as we have concern for the dead even though we certainly do not know what they are doing. For if we had no concern for the dead, we would not pray to God for them. In the end Abraham did not send Lazarus, and he answered that they had Moses and the prophets here, whom they ought to obey so that they would not come to those punishments (Luke 16:29). Here again the question arises: how did father Abraham himself not know what was happening here, when he knew that Moses and the prophets were here—that is, their books, by obeying which people avoid the torments of the underworld—and when he also knew that the rich man had lived in pleasures while poor Lazarus had lived in labors and pains? For he says to him: “Remember, child, that you received good things in your life, and Lazarus in like manner evil things” (Luke 16:25). So he knew these things, which had certainly taken place among the living, not among the dead. But he could not have known them while they were happening among the living; he was able to learn them after they had died, with Lazarus indicating them—so that what the prophet says is not false: “Abraham did not know us” (Isaiah 63:16).

18So it must be admitted that the dead do not know what is done here while it is done here, but afterwards they hear it from those who pass from here to them by dying—not everything, but what those are permitted to indicate, who are also permitted to remember these things, and what those to whom they indicate them ought to hear. The dead can also hear something from the angels, who are present at the things that are done here, whatever the One to whom all things are subject judges that each of them ought to hear. For if there were no angels who could be present in the places of both the living and the dead, the Lord Jesus would not have said: “It happened that the poor man died and was carried away by the angels into Abraham’s bosom” (Luke 16:22). Therefore they were able to be now here, now there, who carried from here to there whomever God willed—namely, the angels. The spirits of the dead can also know some things that are done here—things that it is necessary for them to know, and for those whom it is necessary to know them—not only present or past things but even future things, by the Spirit of God revealing them, just as not all human beings but the prophets knew them while they lived here, and not even they knew all things, but only what God’s providence judged should be revealed to them. Divine Scripture also testifies that some of the dead are sent to the living, just as, on the other hand, Paul was caught up from the living into paradise. For the prophet Samuel, after his death, foretold even future things to King Saul while he was alive; although some think that it was not Samuel himself—who could have been called up by magic arts—but some spirit suited to such evil works that figured his likeness. Yet the book of Sirach, which Ben Sira is handed down to have written and which is pronounced Solomon’s because of a certain likeness of eloquence, contains in the Praise of the Fathers that Samuel prophesied even after death. But if this book is also contradicted by the Hebrews because it is not in their canon, what are we to say about Moses, who certainly both died in Deuteronomy and is read to have appeared to the living in the Gospel with Elijah, who did not die?

19This also solves the question of how martyrs show that they are involved in human affairs through the very favors granted to those who pray, if the dead do not know what the living are doing. For we have heard—not from uncertain rumors but from reliable witnesses—that the confessor Felix, whose dwelling you devoutly love, appeared not only through the effects of his favors but even to people's very sight when Nola was being attacked by barbarians. But such things are shown forth by God in a way far different from the usual order assigned to each kind of creature. For water was suddenly turned into wine when the Lord willed it, but that does not mean we should fail to recognize what water can do in its own proper order among the elements, apart from the rarity or rather the uniqueness of that divine work. Nor does the fact that Lazarus rose mean that every dead person rises whenever he wishes, or that a lifeless body is roused by a living person the way a sleeper is roused by someone awake. Human affairs have their limits; signs of divine powers are something else. Some things happen naturally, others miraculously—though God is present to nature, that it may be, and nature is not absent from miracles. So we should not think that any dead person can be involved in the affairs of the living just because martyrs are present to heal or help certain people. Rather, we should understand that martyrs are involved in the affairs of the living through divine power, precisely because the dead by their own nature cannot be involved in the affairs of the living.

20Yet this question goes beyond the strength of my understanding: how martyrs help those who are certainly aided through them. Do they themselves, by their own power, attend at one time in places so diverse and separated by such great distances—whether where their memorial shrines are, or apart from their shrines, wherever they are felt to be present? Or are they themselves in a place suited to their merits, removed from all dealings with mortals, and yet praying in a general way for the needs of those who entreat them—just as we pray for the dead, though we are certainly not present to them, nor do we know where they are or what they are doing—and does almighty God, who is present everywhere and neither joined to us nor far from us, hear the prayers of the martyrs and, through angelic ministries spread everywhere, provide to human beings those comforts that he judges should be provided in the misery of this life? And does he commend the merits of his martyrs where he wills, when he wills, how he wills—and especially through their memorial shrines, because he knows this helps us to build up faith in Christ, for whose confession they suffered—by his wonderful and ineffable power and goodness? This matter is too high for me to reach, and too hidden for me to search out. And so I do not dare to define which of these two it is, or whether perhaps it is both—that sometimes these things happen through the very presence of the martyrs, sometimes through angels taking on the role of the martyrs. I would rather ask those who know. For it is not that there is no one who knows these things—not someone who merely seems to himself to know yet does not know. These are gifts of God, who gives one thing to some and another to others, according to the apostle, who says that to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. "To one," he says, "is given through the Spirit a word of wisdom; to another a word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith in the same Spirit; to another gifts of healings in the one Spirit; to another workings of powers; to another prophecy; to another discernment of spirits; to another kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of utterances. All these are worked by one and the same Spirit, distributing to each one his own as he wills" (1 Corinthians 12:8-11). Of all these spiritual gifts that the apostle listed, whoever has been given discernment of spirits knows these things as they ought to be known.

21We must believe this was the kind of man John the monk was, the one the elder Emperor Theodosius consulted about the outcome of a civil war; for he also had the gift of prophecy. I have no doubt that one person can possess not just one of these gifts but several. This John, then, was sought by a very devout woman who was impatient to see him and pressed her husband insistently to obtain it for her. John refused, since he had never allowed women to visit him, but he said, "Go and tell your wife: she will see me next night, but in a dream." And so it happened. He gave her whatever counsel a faithful married woman needed to receive. When she woke, she told her husband that she had seen the man of God just as her husband knew him, and she reported what she had heard from him. The man who learned this from them told it to me—a serious and noble man, entirely worthy of belief.

But if I had seen that holy monk myself, since he is said to have answered questions with the greatest patience and wisdom, I would have asked him about the point relevant to this question: whether he himself had come to that woman in her dream—that is, whether his spirit had come in the likeness of his body, just as we dream of ourselves in the likeness of our body—or whether, while he was doing something else, or if he was asleep, dreaming something else, the vision was produced in the woman's dream through an angel or in some other way, and he foreknew that it would happen because the spirit of prophecy revealed it to him when he made the promise. For if he was actually present to her as she dreamed, he could do that only by a wonderful grace, not by nature—by God's gift, not by his own power. But if he was doing something else, or sleeping and occupied with other dreams, while the woman saw him in her dream, then something happened like what we read in the Acts of the Apostles, where the Lord Jesus speaks to Ananias about Saul and tells him that Saul has seen Ananias coming to him, though Ananias himself did not know it (Acts 9:12).

Whichever of these that man of God might answer me, I would go on to ask him about the martyrs: whether they themselves are present in dreams, or in whatever other way they appear to those who see them, in whatever form they wish—and especially when demons in people confess that they are being tormented by them and beg them to spare them. Are these things done by God's command through angelic powers, for the honor and prayerful commending of the saints and for the benefit of human beings, while the saints themselves are placed in the highest rest and are free for other, far better visions, apart from us and praying for us? For at Milan, at the shrines of the holy martyrs Protasius and Gervasius, demons called by name not only the dead whom they were commemorating in the same way but also Ambrose, the bishop, who was still alive, and begged him to spare them—while Ambrose was doing something else and had no idea this was happening. Or are these things sometimes done through the actual presence of the martyrs, and sometimes through angels? And can the two be distinguished by us, and by what signs—or can no one perceive and judge these things except the one who has that gift through God's Spirit, who divides to each his own as he wills (1 Corinthians 12:11)?

I believe John would have discussed all these things with me as I wished, so that either I would learn from his teaching and recognize that what I heard was true and certain, or I would believe what I did not know because he was telling me what he knew. But if he had perhaps answered me from holy Scripture and said, "Do not seek things too high for you, and do not search out things too strong for you; but think always on what the Lord has commanded you" (Sirach 3:21-22), I would have accepted that too with gratitude. For it is no small fruit if, when some obscure and uncertain matters are beyond our grasp, it becomes at least clear and certain to us that they should not be sought after—and that whatever anyone wants to learn, thinking it will help him to know it, he should learn that it does him no harm not to know it.

22Since this is so, we should not think that anything reaches the dead for whom we are caring except what we solemnly pray for them through the sacrifices of the altar, of prayers, and of alms. Yet these do not benefit all for whom they are offered, but only those for whom, while they lived, provision was made that they might benefit. But because we cannot discern who these are, we ought to offer them for all the baptized, so that none of those to whom these benefits can and should reach may be passed over. For it is better that these things be in excess for those whom they neither harm nor help than that they be lacking for those whom they help. Still, each person does these things more diligently for his own dear ones, so that the same may be done for him by his own. Whatever is spent on burying a body, however, is not a safeguard of salvation but a service of human kindness, according to the affection by which no one ever hates his own flesh. So a person ought to care as much as he can for the flesh of his neighbor when the one who bore it has departed from it. And if those who do not believe in the resurrection of the flesh do these things, how much more ought those who do believe to do them, so that this kind of service paid to a body that is dead but will rise again and remain for eternity is also in some way a testimony of that same faith! But as for being buried near the memorial shrines of martyrs, this seems to me to benefit the deceased only in this way: that by commending him also to the intercession of the martyrs, the affection of prayer for him may be increased.

23You have my answer, such as I could give, to the questions you thought I should be asked. If it is longer than it needed to be, forgive me; it came from the love of talking with you at length. Let me learn from your reply how your venerable love receives this book. The bearer of it will certainly make it more welcome to you—our brother and fellow presbyter Candidianus, whom I came to know through your letter, welcomed with all my heart, and let go unwillingly. His presence consoled us greatly in the love of Christ, and I must admit that I yielded to his urging on your behalf. So many things stretch my heart that, unless he had kept reminding me and would not let me forget, my answer to your question would never have been written.