The verdict of 'suicide whilst temporarily insane' : a legal contradiction / by R. Henslowe Wellington.

  • Wellington, Richard Henslowe, 1862?-1940.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The verdict of 'suicide whilst temporarily insane' : a legal contradiction / by R. Henslowe Wellington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Christian theologians carried their doctrine of the sanctity of human life to such a point that they maintained dogmatically that a man who destroys his own life has committed a crime similar both in kind and magnitude to that of an ordinary murderer. There were, however, two forms of suicide which were regarded in the early Church with some tolerance or hesitation. The following became the theological doctrine on the subject : “ Est vere homicida et reus homicidii qui se interficiendo innocentum hominem interfecerit.” (Lisle, Du Suicide, p. 400). (He is indeed a murderer, and a party to murder, who, by destroying himself, shall have destroyed a guiltless man.). During the frenzy excited by persecution, and under the influence of the belief that martyrdom effaced in a moment the sins of a life and intro- duced the sufferer at once into celestial joys, it was not uncommon for men, in a transport of enthusiasm, to rush before the Pagan judges* imploring or provoking martyrdom. The councils of the Church condemned them. A more serious difficulty arose about Christian women who com- mitted suicide to guard their chastity when menaced by the infamous sentence of their persecutors, or more frequently by the lust of emperors or by barbarian invaders. St. Ambrose rather timidly, and St. Jerome more strongly, commended it, but St. Augustine devoted an elaborate examination to the subject, and, while expressing his pitying admiration for the virgin-suicide, decidedly condemned their act. His opinion of the absolute sinfulness of suicide has since been generally adopted by the Catholic theologians. Direct and deliberate suicide, which occupies so prominent a place in the moral history of antiquity, almost absolutely disappeared within the Church ; but beyond its pale the Circumcelliones,* in the fourth century, constituted themselves the apostles of death. Assembling in hundreds— St. Augustine says even in thousands—they leaped with paroxysms of frantic joy from the brows of overhanging cliffs, till the rocks below were redderied with their blood. At a much later period we find among the * A sect of Donatist Christians in Africa, so called because they rambled from one town to another, professing to be public reformers and redressers of grievances. They manumitted slaves without their masters’ leave, forgave debts which were none of their own, and committed a great many other unwarrantable acts, and naturally were not long in falling into disrepute,