_Readings_.--Ar., _Eth_., III., vii., 13; _ib_., V., xi., nn. 1-3; St. Thos., 2a 2æ, q. 64, art. 5; St. Aug., _De Civitate Dei_, i., cc. 26, 27; Paley, _Mor_. _Phil_., bk. iv., c. iii. SECTION IV.--_Of Duelling_. 1. A duel may be defined: A meeting of two parties by private agreement to fight with weapons in themselves deadly. The meeting must be _by agreement_: a chance meeting of Montagues and Capulets, where the parties improvise a fight on the spot is not a duel. The agreement must be _private_; anything arranged by public authority, as the encounter of David with Goliath, that in the legend of the Horatii and Curiatii, or the _wager of battle_ in the Middle Ages is not a duel. It is enough that the weapons be _in themselves deadly_, as swords or pistols, though there be an express stipulation not to kill: but a pre-arranged encounter with fists, with foils with buttons on, or even perhaps with crab-sticks, is not a duel. 2. The hard case in duelling is the case of him who receives the challenge. Let us make the case as hard as possible. In a certain army, every challenge sent to an officer is reported to a Court of Honour. If the Court decide that it ought to be accepted, accept the officer must, or lose his commission and all hope of military distinction. In this army, say, there is an officer of high promise who is believed to object to duels on conscientious grounds. An enemy pretends to have been insulted, and challenges him, on purpose to see him refuse and have to go down into the ranks, his career spoilt. The Court of Honour rules that the duel must come off. Of this very case, Reiffenstuel, a canonist of repute, about the year 1700, writes: "The answer is, ... that they who in such cases are so necessitated and constrained to offer, or accept, a duel, as that unless they offered, or accepted it, they would be held cowardly, craven, mean, and unfit to bear office in the army, and consequently would be deprived of the office that they actually enjoy, and support themselves and their family by, or would for ever forfeit all hope of promotion, otherwise their due and desert,--these I say in such a case are free from all fault and penalty, whether they offer or accept a duel." (In lib. v. decret., tit. 14, nn. 30, 31.) The author protests in his Preface that he wishes his opinions "all and each to be subject to the judgment, censure, and correction of the Holy Catholic Church." The opinion above quoted was condemned, word for word as it was uttered, by Pope Benedict XIV. in 1752.