An earlier version of this paper was presented in October 1995 at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in San Francisco. Support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of Mississippi's College of Liberal Arts and Graduate School is gratefully acknowledged. For their invaluable assistance in identifying pertinent sources, I thank the superb staffs of the Institut d'histoire de la Reformation at the Universite de Geneve and of the H. Henry Meeter Center at Calvin Seminary. I also thank Paul M. Thayer for his vitally important help.

1. Procès Criminel (hereafter PC) 552, Archives d'État de Genève (hereafter AEG); and Registres du Conseil (hereafter RC) 50, AEG, 23v, 25v, 27–28.Google Scholar

2. PC 1179, AEG.Google Scholar

3. PC 4112, AEG; RC 170: 361, 364–365; and MS Hist. 133ter, AEG. Though common through the early 1600s, this severity was unusual for the second half of the seventeenth century. By 1670 authorities only rarely ordered the desecration of suicides' corpses and usually did not order the confiscation of all their assets.Google Scholar

4. MacDonald, Michael and Murphy, Terence R., Sleepless Souls: Suicide in Early Modern England (Oxford, U.K., 1990), pp. 15–106.Google Scholar

5. See Watt, Jeffrey R., “The Marriage Laws Calvin Drafted for Geneva,” in Calvinus Sacrae ScripturaeProfessor, ed. Neuser, W. H. (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1994), pp. 245–255.Google Scholar

6. These sermons are found respectively in Ioannis Calvini Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia (hereafter CO), ed. Baum, Gulielmus, Cunitz, Eduardus, and Reuss, Eduardus (Brunswick, Germany, 1891), 46: 712–722;Google Scholarand Supplementa Calviniana, ed. Rückert, Hanns (Neukirchen, Germany, 1961), pp. 511–519. The sermon dealing with 2 Samuel 17 was delivered Monday, 9 November 1562. The date of the sermon pertaining to Saul's death is unknown. The original French version of this sermon no longer exists; all that survives is a Latin translation from the seventeenth century. The most famous suicide in the Bible is of course that of Judas. In his commentary on Matthew 27:5, however, Calvin showed little interest in self-murder per se. He was much more concerned with Judas's treason than suicide; CO 45:747.Google Scholar

7. CO 46: 714, 721.Google Scholar

8. Supplementa, pp. 511–512.Google Scholar

9. CO 46: 721.Google Scholar

10. City of Cod, 1.17–27; compare Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Secunda Secundae, Quaest. 64, Art. 5. In the Phaedo(62b-c), Plato condemned voluntary death as a form of usurping the authority of God. Nonetheless, he asserted that taking one's life was justified if God sends some necessity upon the individual, in effect requiring suicide of him, as in the case of Socrates. In the ninth book of The Laws (873c), Plato indicated that people mayjustifiably put an end to their lives if the state orders them to do so or if they suffer an “excruciating and unavoidable misfortune” or overwhelming shame. Plato in short disapproved of voluntarily ending one's life without good reason. Augustine may have been influenced more directly by Neoplatonists who tended to take a stronger stand against suicide than Plato. In his Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, the Neoplatonist Maerobius, a contemporary of Augustine, wrote that suicides will not have eternal life with God; people must wait for God to free them from the fetters of the body. This, however, still seemed to allow the possibility that one could justifiably kill oneself if so ordered by God. The pagan Virgil also wrote that those who voluntarily take their lives are condemned, describing the melancholic shadows of suicides in hell; Aeneid 6.434–439;Google ScholarBayet, Albert, Le suicide et la morale (1922; repr. New York, 1975), pp. 300, 387–388, 434–446;Google Scholarand Droge, Arthur J. and Tabor, James D., A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom Among Christians and Jews of Antiquity (New York, 1992), pp. 5, 20–22, 41–42.Google Scholar

11. CO46: 718–719.Google Scholar

12. Crocker, Lester G., “The Discussion of Suicide in the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of the History of Ideas 13 (1952): 52.CrossRefGoogle ScholarCicero, for example, employed this analogy; Tusculan Disputations 1.74.Google Scholar

13. CO 46: 719.Google Scholar

14. ibid.

15. ibid; compare 2 Corinthians 10 and 11.

16. Supplementa, p. 514.Google ScholarAristotle wrote, “Courage … is confident and endures because it is noble to do so or base not to do so. But to seek death in order to escape from poverty, or the pangs of love, or from pain or sorrow, is not the act of a courageous man, but rather of a coward; for it is weakness to fly from troubles, and the suicide does not endure death because it is noble to do so, but to escape evil”; Nicomachean Ethics 3.7.13. Like Plato, Aristotle does not seem to be condemning all suicides but rather those committed for the wrong reasons.Google Scholar

17. CO 46: 719, 721; compare Ecclesiastes 12:7 and 2 Corinthians 11:25–33.Google Scholar

18. CO 46: 718; compare City of God 1.22. Ancient pagan authors were not nearly as unified on the issue of suicide as Calvin and Augustine suggested. Pythagoreans opposed all suicides and, as noted above, Augustine borrowed heavily from pagan authors, especially from Plato and Neoplatonists.Google Scholar

19. Seneca described suicide as a means of liberation and proclaimed Cato's death as a “most glorious and memorable an end”; On Anger 3.15.3–4; and On Providence 2.9–12. Even Cicero, who generally condemned suicide, lauded Cato, believing he had received divine approbation for this act; Tusculan Disputations 1.74; Droge and Tabor, Noble Death, pp. 32–36;Google ScholarGriffin, Miriam, “Philosophy, Cato, and Roman Suicide,” Greece and Rome 33 (1986): 64–77, 192–202;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Grisé, Yolande, Le suicide dans la Rome antique (Paris, 1982), pp. 60–63.Google ScholarCondemning Cato's suicide, Augustine vowed that a more appropriate role model from pagan Rome was Regulus, who surrendered to the Carthaginians in the First Punic War and reportedly suffered a most torturous death at their hands; City of God 1.22–23. It must be noted that no philosopher, including Seneca, was actually promoting suicide. Seneca deplored suicides that were motivated by a simple weariness of living or that were acts of passion, the consequences of which had not been thoughtfully weighed. Seneca admired only those suicides that were based on rational reflection and insisted that people must not take their lives if they could still be useful to others;Google ScholarTadic-Gilloteaux, Nicole, “Sénèque face au suicide,” L'antiquité classique 32 (1963): 541–551.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. CO 46: 718.Google Scholar

21. Supplementa, p. 513; compare Augustine, City of God 1.21.Google Scholar

22. Supplementa, p. 513.Google Scholar

23. CO 46: 722.Google Scholar

24. Augustine argued that since one does not have the right to kill a guilty person, then one certainly must not kill innocent people, such as these women who were about to be raped. He further argued that in killing oneself to avoid another sin, one has committed a sin for which one cannot do penance. The logical consequence of this endeavor to remain pure and avoid sin, he asserted, is that the Christian ought to commit suicide immediately after baptism. He also criticized Lucretia who killed herself out of shame after being raped by Sextus Tarquinius, declaring that she had punished the innocent victim of rape; City of God 1.16–18, 24, 26. In chapter 25, however, Augustine did acknowledge that it was possible that some of these early Christian female martyrs may have been obeving a divine order to take their lives. Aquinas, like Augustine, said that a woman must never commit the greater sin of voluntary death to avoid the lesser sin of another person. The Bible says, moreover, that one must not do evil so that good may come; Romans 3:8; and Summa Theologica, Secunda Secundae, Quaest. 64, Art. 5.Google Scholar

25. Supplementa, p. 515;Google Scholarcompare CO 46: 722;Google Scholar and City of God 1.16–17.Google Scholar

26. Supplementa, pp. 512–513.Google Scholar

27. Summa Theologica, Secunda Secundae, Quaest. 64, Art. 5;Google Scholar and Bayet, Suicide et morale, pp. 426–428.Google Scholar

28. Supplementa, p. 513.Google Scholar

29. Supplementa, p. 513;Google ScholarMacDonald, and Murphy, , Sleepless Souls, pp. 34–76;Google Scholar and Schmitt, Jean-Claude, “Le suicide au Moyen Age,” Annales: E.S.C. 31 (1976): 4–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30. Supplementa, p. 514.Google Scholar

31. PC 983, AEG.Google Scholar

32. PC 1179, AEG.Google Scholar

33. PC 2e Série 745, AEG.Google Scholar

34. PC 552, AEG; and RC 50: 23v.Google Scholar

35. Supplementa, pp. 514–515;Google Scholarcompare Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 5.11.1. Citing “the Philosopher” as his authority, Aquinas held that as every person is part of society, by killing oneself, one injures society;Google ScholarSumma Theologica, Secunda Secundae, Quaest. 64, Art. 5.Google Scholar

36. CO 46: 721;Google Scholarcompare Hebrews 11:36–40.Google Scholar

37. CO 46: 722;Google Scholarcompare Hebrews 11: 35–37 and 2 Maccabees 6–7.Google Scholar

38. The first mention of Peter's martyrdom was by Clement of Rome in the last decade of the first century (1 Clement 5: 1–4, 6: 1–2). Clement, however, made no mention of precisely the method by which Peter died. The first mention of his being crucified upside down was made in the fourth-century Latin Acts of Peter which, like 1 Clement, has been consigned to the realm of the apocrypha;Google ScholarBerardino, Angelo Di, ed., Encyclopedia of the Early Church (New York, 1992), s. v. “Peter”.Google Scholar

39. Supplementa, p. 513.Google Scholar

40. Augustine argued that Samson's death, though self-inflicted, was justified because he was fulfilling an order from God; City of God 1.20.Google ScholarIn light of the scriptural passage, however, this argument is far from convincing. Discussing the scriptural forecast of Peter's death, Calvin preached, “Peter was not … without fear. For it was with good reason that Jesus said to Peter, ‘when you were young, you used to get ready and go anywhere you wanted to; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will tie you up and take you where you don't want to go.’ [John 21:18] Our Lord Jesus Christ thus shows this natural inclination [to avoid death] was in St. Peter, who had to struggle to overcome this terror of death. And that is why I have said that it is a monstrous and hideous thing for a man deliberately to want to die”;Google ScholarSupplements p. 513.Google ScholarThe next verse from the gospel, not quoted by Calvin, reads, “(In saying this, Jesus was indicating the way in which Peter would die and bring glory to God.)”Google Scholar

41. Droge, and Tabor, , Noble Death, pp. 5, 22.Google Scholar

42. Bayet, , Suicide et morale, pp. 387–388, 434–446.Google ScholarJean Delumeau maintains that such burial customs for suicides exemplified the Christianization of pre- or non-Christian rituals;Google ScholarLa peur en Occident (XTVe-XVIIIe siècles) (Paris, 1978), pp. 84–85.Google ScholarIn early modern England, Michael MacDonald and Terence Murphy describe the rites of desecration, which clearly included pagan elements, as “a genuine demotic custom, performed by laymen without clerical participation, … an expression of a deeply held conviction that self-murder was supernaturally evil”; Sleepless Souls, pp. 44–45.Google Scholar

43. Laws 873c–d. The ancients regularly punished at least some suicides. Thebans and Romans at times left suicides unburied, while Athenians cut off the suicide's hand that was responsible for the death. In ancient Rome soldiers, among others, who took their lives forfeited their goods because they had neglected their obligations to the state in killing themselves; MacDonald and Murphy, Sleepless Souls, p. 17.Google ScholarRomans found death by hanging particularly repulsive and denied burial to those who took their lives by this method; Grisé, Suicide dans la Rome antique, pp. 141–149.Google Scholar

44. Supplementa, pp. 517–519.Google Scholar

45. ibid, p. 519.

46. In his commentary, Calvin discusses the passage in which Moses declared that the bodies of executed criminals must not be left hanging from a post but rather ought to be buried the same day of the execution (Deuteronomy 21:22–23). Calvin maintained that Moses was concerned lest the Israelites become inured to such scenes of barbarism and in turn become more prone to commit homicide themselves; CO 24:629.Google Scholar

47. MacDonald and Murphy observe with regard to the burial practices surrounding suicides: “Since the Protestant clergy stressed the supernatural causes of self-murder, they had either to replace or to tolerate the popular religious practices that dealt with its supernatural consequences. They chose to tolerate them”; Sleepless Souls, p. 44.Google Scholar

48. The Geneva Bible contains the following gloss regarding Razias's suicide: “As this private example oght not to be followed of the godlie, because it is contrary to the worde of God, althogh the autor seme here to approve”;Google ScholarThe Geneva Bible: A Facsimile of the 1560 Edition, (Madison, Wise, 1969), 2 Maccabees 14: 41.Google ScholarNotwithstanding Scripture, Aquinas con demned Razias's suicide as an act of weakness or cowardice; Summa Theologica, Secunda Secundae, Quaest. 64, Art. 5.Google Scholar

49. CO 24: 611–613; 26: 321–334; compare City of God 1.19.Google Scholar

50. The catechism produced by the Council of Trent condemned all suicides, and a series of councils in France—Lyon (1577), Bordeaux (1583), Cambrai (1586), and Chartres (1587)—all forbade the burial of suicides; Bayet, Suicide et morale, pp. 541–542.Google Scholar

51. Charron, , De la Sagesse (Paris, 1606), 2.2;Google ScholarMontaigne, , “Coustume de l'Isle de Cea,” Essais (Paris, 1595), 2.3;Google ScholarMore, , Utopia (Louvain, Belgium, 1516), Book 2.CrossRefGoogle ScholarElsewhere, however, Thomas More condemned suicide in no uncertain terms, writing that the most horrible fear that one can experience is "where the devill temptith a man to kyll and destroy hym selfe”;Google ScholarThe Complete Works, vol. 12: A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulations, ed. Marts, L. L. and Manley, F. (New Haven, Conn., 1976), p. 122;Google Scholarcited in MacDonatd and Murphy, Sleepless Souls, p. 90.Google Scholar

52. Donne endeavored to refute Aquinas's arguments that suicide violates the laws of nature, the state, and God: under certain circumstances, some people naturally desire death; voluntary death is not contrary to the law of the state so long as the individual is not motivated by self-interest;Google Scholarthe Bible nowhere condemns suicide per se. Donne, Biathanatos: A Declaration of the Paradox or Thesis That Self-Homicide Is Not So Naturally a Sin That It May Never Be Otherwise (London, 1647);Google ScholarDroge, and Tabor, , Noble Death, pp. 7–8. For eighteenthcentury views, see Crocker, “Discussion of Suicide,” pp. 47–72;Google Scholarand McManners, John, Death and the Enlightenment: Changing Attitudes to Death in Eighteenth-century France (Oxford, U.K., 1981), pp. 409–437.Google Scholar

53. From 1540 through 1564, there is also record of three suicides in the surrounding countryside that depended on Geneva. By comparison, extant records reveal forty-five homicides, including six cases of infanticide, for the same years. The population of Geneva fluctuated widely at this time because of the arrivals and departures of large numbers of refugees, especially from France. Estimates indicate that the city's population was 13,100 in 1550, increasing to 21,400 in 1560 (a peak that would not be matched until the eighteenth century), and then decreasing to 16,000 in 1570;Google ScholarPerrenoud, Alfred, La population de Genève XVIe-XIXe siècles (Geneva, Switzerland, 1979), p. 37.Google ScholarThe only study thus far that suggests that suicide was not rare in Reformation Europe is Michael Zell, “Suicide in Pre-Industrial England,” Social History 11 (1986): 303–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54. See MacDonald, Michael, “The Secularization of Suicide in England 1660–1800,” Past and Present 111 (1986): 50–100.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMedOn suicide in eighteenth-century Geneva, see Haeberli, Laurent, “Le suicide à Genève au XVIIIe siècle, in Pour une Hisloire Qualitative (Geneva, Switzerland, 1975), pp. 115–129;Google ScholarPorret, Michel, “‘Je ne suis déjà plus de ce monde’: Le suicide des vieillards à Genève au XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” in Lepoidsdesans. Une histoire de la vieillesse en Suisse Romande, ed. Heller, Geneviève (Lausanne, Switzerland, 1994), pp. 67–94;Google ScholarPorret, , “Solitude, mélancolie, souifrance: Le suicide à Genève durant l'Ancien Régime (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles),” Cahiers Psychiatriques Genevois 16 (1994): 9–21;Google ScholarWatt, , “The Family, Love, and Suicide in Early Modern Geneva,” Journal of Family History 21 (1996): 63–86;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMedWatt, , “Reformed Piety and Suicide in Geneva, 1550–1800,” in The Identity of Geneva: The Christian Commonwealth, 1564–1864, ed. Roney, John B. and Klauber, Martin (Westport, Conn., forthcoming).Google Scholar