[184] Damhouder, Praxis rerum criminalium, lviii. 2 sq., p. 258. See Gratian, op. cit. ii. 33. 3. 3. 38. At the trial of the Marquise de Brinvilliers in 1676, the presiding judge said to the prisoner that “the greatest of all her crimes, horrible as they were, was, not the poisoning of her father and brothers, but her attempt to poison herself” (Ives, Classification of Crimes, p. 36).
According to the Christian doctrine, as formulated by Thomas Aquinas, suicide is utterly unlawful for three reasons. First, everything naturally loves itself and preserves itself in being; suicide is against a natural inclination and contrary to the charity which a man ought to bear towards himself, and consequently a mortal sin. Secondly, by killing himself a person does an injury to the community of which he is a part. Thirdly, “life is a gift divinely bestowed on man, and subject to His power who ‘killeth and maketh alive’; and therefore he who takes his own life sins against God, as he who kills another man’s slave sins against the master to whom the slave belongs, and as he sins who usurps the office of judge on a point not referred to him; for to God alone belongs judgment of life and death.”[185] The second of these arguments is borrowed from Aristotle, and is entirely foreign to the spirit of early Christianity. The notion of patriotism being a moral duty was habitually discouraged by it, and, as Mr. Lecky observes, “it was impossible to urge the civic argument against suicide without at the same time condemning the hermit life, which in the third century became the ideal of the Church.”[186] But the other arguments are deeply rooted in some of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity—in the sacredness of human life, in the duty of absolute submission to God’s will, and in the extreme importance attached to the moment of death. The earthly life is a preparation for eternity; sufferings which are sent by God are not to be evaded, but to be endured.[187] The man who deliberately takes away the life which was given him by the Creator displays the utmost disregard for the will and authority of his Master; and, worst of all, he does so in the very last minute of his life, when his doom is sealed for ever. His deed, as Thomas Aquinas says, is “the most dangerous thing of all, because no time is left to expiate it by repentance.”[188] He who kills a fellow-creature does not in the same degree renounce the protection of God; he kills only the body, whereas the self-murderer kills both the body and the soul.[189] By denying the latter the right of Christian burial the Church recognises that he has placed himself outside her pale.
[185] Thomas Aquinas, op. cit. ii.-ii. 64. 5.
[186] Lecky, History of European Morals, ii. 44.
[187] Cf. St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, i. 23.
[188] Thomas Aquinas, op. cit. ii.-ii. 64. 5. 3. Cf. St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, i. 25.
[189] Damhouder, op. cit. lxxxviii. 1 sq., p. 258.
The condemnation of the Church influenced the secular legislation. The provisions of the Councils were introduced into the law-books. In France Louis IX. enforced the penalty of confiscating the self-murderer’s property,[190] and laws to the same effect were passed in other European countries.[191] Louis XIV. assimilated the crime of suicide to that of lèze majesté.[192] According to the law of Scotland, “self-murder is as highly criminal as the killing our neighbour.”[193] In England suicide is still regarded by the law as murder committed by a man on himself;[194] and, unless declared insane, the self-murderer forfeited his property as late as the year 1870, when forfeitures for felony were abolished.[195] In Russia, to this day, the testamentary dispositions of a suicide are deemed void by the law.[196]
[190] Les Établissements de Saint Louis, i. 92, vol. ii. 150.
[191] Bourquelot, op. cit. iv. 263. Morselli, op. cit. p. 196 sq.