Commentaria in Numeros
Verse 32. The Hebrew has: do not take a ransom, that is a fine or money offered to the judge, that he who of set purpose committed slaughter may flee to the city of his asylum, and return to dwell in the land before the death of the priest. There are some who think that before “that he may return” the particle “or” has been omitted, in this sense: Allow not thyself to be led by any reward, that he who has been brought from the city of asylum under public protection to judgment, if he be found to have committed homicide of deliberate purpose, be sent back to the city of asylum; or that
Verse 33. THAT YOU POLLUTE NOT THE LAND,—with homicide. Of homicide, on account of its enormity, it is said that it pollutes the land, which has received innocent blood shed, as though it sprinkled on the land a moral stain and blemish, especially if it be a holy land, or God show himself peculiarly in it, as he did in the land of the children of Israel; and that this stain is taken away by just vengeance and the death of the homicide. So of certain other sins, as Sodomy, the wages of workmen defrauded, the oppression of the poor and of orphans, Scripture says that they cry to heaven, because by their enormity they as it were demand vengeance from God.
Morally, learn from this chapter how inviolate the right of asylum and of the Church ought to be kept: hence those who have violated it have been gravely punished by God.
First, Heliodorus, wishing to claim for himself the gold deposited in the temple, was scourged by an angel, and was scarcely delivered by the prayers of Onias, 2 Machabees iii.
Secondly, Nicanor, 2 Machabees xiv, despising God, and swearing that he would dedicate the temple of the Lord to Father Bacchus unless Judas, who was there, were delivered up, is slain.
Thirdly, St. Augustine, epistle 6 in the Appendix, gravely rebukes Count Boniface, who was acting with the Goths in Africa, leader of the army, for having ordered one who had fled to the church to be dragged from it. “I wonder,” he says, “how so suddenly the enemy’s ram has broken the wall of faith; for I know with what religion thou hast always venerated the Church of God. At whose instance, brother, didst thou seize a man from the church? If thy fugitive had perchance presumed upon his friend, he could doubtless by an intercessor’s cause deserve pardon; if then a friend is regarded, why is God offended? But if presumption is made upon power, consider King Nabuchodonosor, who for pride was changed from a man into an ox. I write this not to confound thee, but as I admonish my most dear son. Restore, therefore, unharmed to the Church the man whom, as most irreligious, thou hast seized.” He then inflicts a penalty on him, saying: “I have forbidden the offering of thy house to be received by the clerics; and I forbid thee communion, until, penance appointed by me being performed for thy daring or error, with contrite and humbled heart thou offer a worthy sacrifice to God for this deed.”
that he who is in the city of asylum be permitted to dwell elsewhere before the death of the High Pontiff. Rightly, as it seems, others think that this alone is the sense of this law, which is set forth in the last member: namely, that no one who had fled to the asylum could redeem with any money the right of returning to his former seat before the death of the high priest.
Fourthly, in the year of the Lord 606, and the 4th year of the empire of Phocas, Scholasticus, a religious man, eunuch of the palace, taking the lady Constantina, formerly Augusta, wife of the Emperor Maurice, with her three daughters, fled to the great church. But the tyrant hastened into the church to drag out the women. The Patriarch Cyriacus then resisted the tyrant, in no way suffering the women to be tyrannically led out. But oaths being given, certainly rendered by Phocas, that he would not hurt them, they are led out of the temple, and shut in a monastery. So from Theophanes and Cedrenus Baronius, in the year of Christ 606.
Fifthly, Aspar and Ardaburius, reclaiming a certain John who had fled to the monastery of St. Marcellus, sent soldiers to extract him by force; but, St. Marcellus praying, lightnings sent upon the soldiers repressed them, so that the cruel Ardaburius spared John, and changed his ways. So has the Life of St. Marcellus. On the occasion of this miracle Baronius thinks it was done that the Emperor Leo promulgated in this very year an excellent enactment on the immunity of those fleeing to the church, writing thus in reply to Erythraeus, prefect of the praetorium: “By the present law we decree, to be valid in all places, that you consent that none at all, of whatever condition they be, be expelled, delivered up, or dragged from the sacrosanct churches of the orthodox faith.”
Sixthly, about the year of the Lord 1000, King Veremund commanded Gudestes, Bishop of Oviedo, to be seized; but that so great a crime might not go unpunished, a great drought came upon the land, so that the whole people was pinched with want of food: and when it had been revealed by the Lord to certain persons that the famine had come because of the injury to the Bishop, and the revelation had been made known to the king, he at once released the Bishop, and by Semen, Bishop of Astorga, to whom the king had committed the Bishop, caused Gudestes to be restored, and at once the Lord sent a voluntary rain, and the earth yielded her fruits. Then King Veremund, compunct in heart, plundering the church of Blessed James and the other places which Almanzor had profaned, restored them as he could, and, now intent on good works and alms, was busy doing penance for his offences with the counsel of the Prelates, and in the village which is in Berizo, he dies and is buried, says Roderic, and Vasaeus, in the year of the Lord 982, and Grantzius, book V of the Swedish History, chapter xxi.
Seventhly, of Sancho the Elder, king of Navarre and Castile, nearly all the writers of Spanish affairs report that, when on a certain day he was pursuing a boar in the chase, the boar, wearied, took refuge within the walls that happened to stand, the remains of the memorial of St. Antoninus the Martyr, taking his stand by the sacred altar left there, as at a safe asylum, accustomed to be fenced by the guard of angels, according to that oracle: “Men and beasts thou wilt preserve, O Lord.” When the king attacked him with a hunting-spear, the arm raised to strike at once felt itself rendered useless by numbness; but, acknowledging his guilt and praying to the Martyr, he felt it divinely restored to its former use, and learned by his loss how great immunity is due to sacred places, even if they seemed to have fallen in ruins, so that it was not lawful to hurt even a beast fleeing thither, says Roderic and Vassaeus, and from them Baronius, in the year of the Lord 1032.
Eighthly, Eutropius, eunuch of Arcadius, infamous for the sink of all crimes, when he had extorted from the Emperor a law by which all immunity should be abrogated, and it should be lawful even to drag out those fleeing to the altars; he himself afterwards, shunning the Emperor’s anger, was dragged from the altar to which he had fled, sent into exile, and thence recalled and beheaded, as Suidas in Eutropius and Chrysostom, in the oration against Eutropius, attest, and by Chrysostom’s procuring the unjust law was abrogated.
Ninthly, of St. Basil Nazianzen writes, in the oration on him, that he protected a widow embracing the altar from the injury of the Governors.
Tenthly, of St. Ambrose Paulinus writes that he defended Cresconius, that he should not be seized there by the lictors; which when he had not obtained, his abductors were torn in the theatre by the wild beasts which had been let loose upon the abducted.
Eleventhly, Orosius, book VII, chapter xxxvi, records the punishment of the violator of asylum, the leader Mascezil.
Finally, what you may wonder at more, St. Justus, having left the bishopric of Lyons, retired into the desert of Egypt, and long lay hid there, doing penance, because he had cast out a man who had fled to the church, to appease the fury of the people, having first received the pledge of the magistrate that no danger should be intended to that man; so has his Life in Surius, tome V.