Commonitorium (Instruction) 1.1–1.511

Whoever you are who, hastening to the rewards of eternal life, desire what will be made everlasting rather than what will perish, learn the way that opens heaven and puts death to flight, that avoids rough ground and runs on a happy path. For we, overcome both by the vices of the flesh and by time, tread the earthly road without grief for it; and amid our mingled prayers this is now our only joy: that what we do not do, others at least may do, so that, since we now spend this lifetime, which flees at once, captured by faithless allurements, wanton, wretched, deceitful, brief, fickle, vain, … alas, the evil source of offences hurls us headlong, you, leaving all these things which will swiftly die, may hold with strong faith the things that will not die. Come then, lend attentive ears and a mind at leisure: life is what I must teach, life is what you must seek. But that the teaching of our little book may be the better, and the course of the song keep to the right paths, it is my will to ask you, almighty God, with heart and voice, and without you, Christ, not even to loose my tongue, you who are wont to take darkness from the blind by restoring light, to put hearing into deaf ears, to drive out the cruel diseases of body and mind, you who in your kindness are wont to loose the mouths of the dumb: in your keeping is the office of our heart and mouth; grant me to understand, grant me to be able to speak, so that your gifts may quicken our tongue, and through you, about you, the speech may be pleasing to you, since at your command the she-ass, speaking with our voice, surpassed all nature in what she was bidden to do,

and the four-footed beast with wondrous speech terrified Balaam as he goaded her back with his spurs; he, at the great and repeated request of the frightened king, preparing dire words against the holy people, could not bring under his own control the tongue that moved, saying one thing with his mouth and desiring another in his heart. For when he was about to curse, he began to bless abundantly, spending on other words a mouth prepared for others. Therefore, unless you, Christ, supply eloquence and understanding, and unless you, Christ, govern the endeavours of the soul, all men will keep their mouths dumb and brute, and even what they can do, this too they will not be able to do. First you must recognize a twofold life, granted by the Lord to man together with reason, so that, since the body is brute with earthly weight, but the soul is quickened by the breath of God, the soul, however spent, would feel no end, while life in this frail body would be brief. The one, the law of birth brings first to all; the other, care obtains by one's own merits. To be born is not ours, nor to live long ours: life can prepare the life that follows. And though we receive both by the Lord's will, and neither comes to us unless God commands it, yet the first is carried downhill with swift turning, the one that follows is given for all time. Into the first we come unknowing, for no reward; the second comes, won by the greatest labour. We are born that we may seek the Lord of heaven and earth and sea, watchful, with all our zeal.

We seek, so that who he is, how great or of what kind, and what he does, we may come to know by true judgment. We know, so that having found him we may worship him with worthy praise; we worship, so that he may grant everlasting life. And we worship not by offering incense, not by pouring out blood, not drenched with wine, not heavy with feasts. Gold, clothing, perfume, cattle, libations, gems, and whatever men think rare or precious, before God lie like worthless masses of earthly weight, like mud, like filth, so without honour. All things are his, whose we confess that we are. Nothing is our own: he possesses it, he gave it. For see, he proclaims by the holy mouth of the prophet: “I do not want your goats, I do not want your calves. The beauty of the field is with me and the glory of heaven; for the world is mine, and what is in the world is mine. Let the vows that are owed be paid to me from a holy heart; let the sacrifice of praise and a pure voice honour me.” Therefore, our reader, you will be able to plead nothing in these admonitions that is hard for you. It is not placed far off, it need not be sought elsewhere; it needs no property, no expense, no price. It is enough that the Lord of the world and Father of all things, in whose decision are good things and evil, who by a greater sense surpasses the words of the one speaking of him, one, incorporeal, holy forever, embracing all things and always one in all, you believe with a devout heart and, believing, call upon with your mouth. But why do I use only bare words in this way, as though there were no admonitions of God on this?

For remember first what was enjoined under the old law, which long ago was written on solid tablets, which grace, given through the Lord Christ, now renews, and which the venerable voice of the gospel sounds forth, so that what stones once held, our hearts might now hold, and faith, twice repeated, might be the richer: “With all your affection and with all your marrow and with all your heart love the Lord your God.” And rightly: for what could you ever pay more justly, bound as you are by such great gifts? He, when you lay as clay among earthly dregs, took from you being mud for all time; he, that you consist of limbs, that you are guided by mind, that you speak with tongue, that you are wise by reason, that you touch with hands, walk with foot, perceive with eyes, hear with ear, smell with nostrils, taste with mouth, supplies before any merit, of his own kindness, as father and as lord of body and soul; and not content with this one gift, by which he furnished you with limbs, he enriched you with senses: he who gave life lavishes the comforts of life, so that it may be endowed for you with every delight. See, for you the heaven hangs, for you the earth spreads out, the air is balanced, the ocean surges; nights and days follow on, and the months of the year; the sun shines, the stars gleam, the moon glows red. Spring pours out soft flowers among varied shoots, summer then ripens the fields heavy with fruit, autumn is soaked with new wine, the olive is very rich, winter, with fires brought near, knows no cold.

To keep off the rains you strengthen the overhanging roofs; with houses set against them you know nothing of the winds; and combing the shaggy back of the wool-bearing sheep you cover your chilled limbs with soft wrappings; nor are light garments of snow-white linen lacking; there are also cloaks of Eastern fleeces: the first the fruitful earth will give back to you when the seed is sown, the second the Seres gather in their tall trees. In short, whatever you have through the whole revolving year, the care of God gives you all of it. The plain is green with harvest, the hill is clothed with the vine, from various trees you reap mellow fruits, and, providently spending effort on a fruitful garden, you take useful vegetables at whatever season you please. You kindle the resinous pine for any light you need; on noble tables the waxen flame flickers. Nor is the earth, made subject to man, bidden to serve him only with earthly things in their various uses: whatever is borne near the clouds, whatever rolls hidden deep in the sea, now with deceiving bait, now with linen woven into nets, by countless arts you seek it here and there. Now for you the fish is drawn from the lowest depths, now birds are snared in the highest air. Dense herds of wild beasts fall before the hunter, struck from afar by javelins or caught in nets. You pursue with steel what lies before you, with dogs you stop what flees, you master with bridles the mouth of the fierce horse. You drive oxen to the curved yokes, she-goats to the milk-pails; sweet honey drips from the wrinkled combs.

You bring out gems from rocks, gold from sands, and with fire you smelt pliant metals from the earth; you pick out the herbs that heal grievous diseases, and diligently by your art you drive out deadly evil. Moreover, that you may take wares from a foreign shore, and give your own to others and seek what belongs to others, you will run over rivers with oars, over seas with sail: you will go long journeys without toil. Or if you fear the sea, you will set carriages moving, and the land will lay itself out to be marked by your wheels. Then if your tossed body seeks soft leisure, moist baths will receive you, dusty as you are; and, stripped of all your clothing in the hollow bath, you will warm your weary limbs in tamed waters. For so many and such great goods won for you by the Lord's gift, what worthy return, then, do you make in devout love? Or with what wealth, with what gifts, could you pay for these, or with how great a service could you repay them? Yet the Lord, whose all things are, does not seek these: it is enough that you, a beloved servant, love the Lord. Then follows the form of the second commandment too, that your neighbour be to you as you are to yourself. I recognize a law that brings salvation with a lasting gift, which provides for all by one single duty. For when the care of another is entrusted to me, it must be that my care likewise is entrusted to another. See, the beast leads beast to fruitful pastures, the glad heifer lows to her own herd. They answer with a murmur, they speak with what voice they can, and in turn the docile tongue is wont to lick.

Nor is what the sea hides beneath its waves without affection, and bird is kind to bird and beast to beast. Then if ever a robber comes out of some throng, the stronger pressing the weak with claw or jaw, whether it be a matter of birds or of beasts, they rally with help gathered from every side, and by running, by herd, by voice, by flight, they wish, even if they cannot, to snatch away their captive companion. And since they so protect one another by nature's gift alone, though they thrive neither in counsel nor in reason, what wonder if, following the Lord's revered commands, mutual care binds man to man, and one skilled in practice, wit, affairs and reason attends as a brother to your advantage as to his own? Hence comes that rightly pleasing saying, which binds the human race in an equal condition: “Do not do to others whatever you do not want done to you, and do to others what you want done to you.” What race of men, what rite, what sex and age, would deny this is right, would deny this is easy? What does this command, narrow as it is, not embrace far and wide? What could be handed down more fully than in this brevity? For I would not wish evil things done to me, just as I desire in turn that good things be done. There is no need of an informer, no teacher is wanted: we know of ourselves what is good and what is evil. You will surely rejoice if someone kindly leads you, when you are travelling by night, into a neighbouring lodging: you too, with care, provide a roof and take in him who will be a traveller late at night;

naked, you wish to be covered with clothing; thirsty, to be called to drink; hungry, to be filled with food: let a like concern, from your own trouble, move you too; share cloaks, cups and food with the wretched. See, when you fall you ask a hand, when grieving comfort, when afraid help, when in doubt counsel: offer these to the grieving, the doubting, the afraid, the falling; in a like case, love, and see that you are loved. Surely you do not want to be accused on a false charge: beware of accusing others on a false charge. You hate the thief: shun theft. You do not want to lose by force what is yours: do nothing by violence. You do not want agreements made with you to waver with uncertain readiness: keep your promised faith with a steadfast heart. You would wish to cut out the tongue that slandered you: take care that no spiteful words of yours brand anyone. When you ask for a loan, you want to receive the money at once: let a ready right hand help him who asks for a loan. You condemn those lifted up with pride: lay aside your swelling; what you shun in the lofty, let the lowly not know from you. Surely if it is a sister, or a mother, or a dear wife, whose life you would not have grave rumour stain, you keep watch, with careful devotion, over their lasting chastity, as son, or brother, or husband: if an adulterer should assail these names you revere, you think the sword not enough for vengeance. Are you not guilty of the same penalty, if you too by stealth set about tempting chaste marriage-beds? Hence it was that the Lord, under the first law, commanded crimes to be weighed with equal punishments:

loss for loss, wound for wound, a tooth torn out to be paid for with a tooth, eyes for eyes. Nor less, so that the bold man who desired to take another's life should give up his own before the judge, and the guilty could not call the judgment wrong, vengeance was decreed for wrongful crimes. And although the grace of Christ has changed these for the better, teaching gentle things rather than violent, yet it is right, whatever the one law or the other commands, whether you repay at once or act with patience. Yet he is the better who rejoices in Christ as avenger, if he keeps for the Lord what the Lord gave him. Therefore by devout prayers and holy deeds accomplish what this present life and the life to come would approve, so that you, whom honour commends as it swiftly flees, everlasting glory may receive after death. For, sure of our admonitions, remember that all the things which fools now think will perish will endure; and believe that souls, the same limbs returning, will take back the very covering of the body. Faces, colour, blood, veins, skin, bones, hair, as they now slip away, so will they come again, not only what stones keep well laid in tombs, or what Arabian dust and perfume, preserving, cover, but, quicker than a word, there will return to be formed into limbs one portion from tombs, one portion from rivers. What the wind wastes with its blowing, what the beast with its bite, what flame has burned up, and what a fall of ruin crushes, all will be present, all will come together from its different places, the part torn by bird or fish, the part by wild beasts,

and what long age now slowly dissolves, the Lord's trumpet will swiftly restore, so that, according to the merits of their deeds, in the same body in which they did good or evil, the flesh, that is, having returned to the motions of the souls, punishment may receive the guilty, and glory the just. But why should you doubt, when the things that go before show you that faith in what is to come may be plain to you? Look at the woods stripped bare by winter's cold now growing luxuriant with leaves that were despaired of. The vine that stood mourning with its shoots shaken off is clothed with leaves, is dressed with fruit. The stalk of corn turns golden with thick ears, the grain that was lately rotting in the ground; and the fields that lay squalid in gloomy sloth laugh gladly with new shoots and glow red with flowers. The year itself, too, enclosed in its various months, has the appearance of death as the seasons change, when spring is driven out by autumn, cold by heat, and, as it is with the affairs of men, this comes and that goes. Yet by this everlasting custom, as long as God allows, it rolls round in alternating office: and while the moving wheel of the long year follows itself, it is born and dies, falls and returns. For our end receives no end, and the death by which we first die dies forever. With motion ever living and sense remaining, every man will live for all time. Man will live: but here tears follow my words; for I think man's lot would have been better thus,

to lay down with the sense of life the sense of punishment and, once born, to become like those never born, than now, with sins ruling through all time, to be dead to life and alive to punishments. For I beg you not to believe, as a shortening of the dire punishment, that the flame that is due swiftly devours the guilty. Look at the hills plunged in everlasting fires, continually burning, yet not diminished; and see the cold springs and the blue rivers always pouring out waters, yet always having them. So the avenging fire will always ravage the wretched, that it may always keep rich fodder for itself. If you think these things false, afterwards you will rightly find them true; but you will escape them as false, if only you fear them as true. Therefore, if everlasting life follows after death, gladdening the just and tormenting the guilty, strive with all your strength and with all your prayers to keep on in the ways that lead aright. Trample down the world, trodden underfoot with the prince of death, and shun trusting wanton delights. [On wantonness] Above all, always despise faces of renown and snatch the judging of them away from your eyes. No one will carry glowing fire with his clothes untouched; no one among the trumpets will fail to take in their sound with his ear; no one among flowers, surrounded by sweet scents, will fail to keep plucking the rose with his nail for his nostrils; no one long thirsty and scorched by a hot sun will bend over cold waters and not drink of them; no one making his way on foot in winter-time will not be sprinkled with rain and soaked.

No one, even within the walls, in time of war lives either quite secure or quite safe. Meeting offers a sight; then the eyes, from the sight, conceive flames and give birth to wickedness, while, as when the fisherman's hook is cast with its deceit, the mind is first caught, then even dies. Woman, alas, first stain of evil! The serpent's guile drove you, and through you man, away from the Lord. You the cause of the good that was snatched away, you the door of death, you quickly deceived, you quickly deceiving. Come then, you who strive to have your breast stained by no blemish and to be pure with a pure mind, as you flee snares, fire, swords and sharp poisons, so will you flee from looking at a much-praised face. I will not now recount, through so many ages, how many peoples the faces of women have ruined. I pass over the Spartan disasters, the Trojan wars, and how near your destruction came through a rape, Rome, when nations under no law of the Lord, nor tamed for life by any admonitions of the saints, were led by a wanton guide where madness drove them, and whatever pleased was also lawful. From the sacred books, I say, from the sacred books learn to how great reproach base love has been. The beauty of Dinah destroyed you, Shechem, as you rushed into excessive love, with your father, with your country. For the brothers, in their devoted care, promised the wrongly violated sister in marriage, and avenged her with the sword. David also, praised in the song of the psalms, a pleasing form brought down from his lofty throne,

when, his crime discovered, he covered his wrongly wanton body with sackcloth and ground it down with ashes. The beauty of Tamar drove two brothers at the same time into the crimes of incest and of the sword. One defiles her, the other avenges the defiled: a vengeance that is just ceases to be dutiful. Solomon himself too, whose wisdom in ancient times was renowned in the whole world, is led into crime, ensnared by forbidden love, placing his base neck under a woman's yoke, and, forgetful of the Lord, the proclamations of praise that had adorned him as a young man rightly forsook him in old age. A form that pleased the king handed you over to death, Haman; a form carried off your head, general Holofernes. That Samson, famed for his wondrous strength, a comely form handed over to the cruel foreigners. He, a holy soldier and victor in so many battles, alas, is wrongly subjected by guile to the company of women, so that, now polluted, since crimes give birth to punishment, he gave kisses to maidens and his back to swords. You too, beloved of the Levite though not his wife, subjected on a mad night to the young men's bed, in zeal for vengeance gave whole tribes to war, content to destroy or to perish, so that Gibeah, with the limbs scattered by the mangled death, made a pyre burned with dire fires. Not if I had a hundred tongues and a hundred mouths could I set out how much a pleasing form does harm. The blessed apostle cries out to the wanton world, giving strict laws even to lawful marriage-beds:

the man possessed by a wife, and the man free who has spurned a wife, do not have the same case in religion. Care for his wife holds back the husband who is entangled; the celibate wishes to have earned God alone. But since the eyes sometimes give way, and everything upright slips at a doubtful fork in the road, if the wicked enemy prepares to stain a pure mind, ever exulting to tempt chaste faith, take up the weapons with which to guard the holy walls of your heart: let the cross be your shield, let the cross be your sword. With suppliant tears, with groaning, prayer, and beaten breast, seek God who brings salvation, night and day. And lest hope little by little coax an easy love, go on drawing back your foot as it slips toward the precipice. For not unknowing do I try to help the wretched: I have suffered all the things I say must be fled. Do you look at beauty? Look rather at the cruel punishments; look at what you praise, look at what you fear, and with inner eyes and true light discern from earth to heaven, and from man to the Lord. Here pleasure is brief, soon to be shut in by a small end; there is a devouring flame of everlasting sulphur. Hear the prophet crying with lofty voice, whether you read the ancient commands or the new: “What praise is in a face? Believe that all flesh is grass, for the glory of the flesh will be like the flower of grass.” For as a blow mows down flowers, heat wears them away, rains confound them, a stronger wind snatches them, so whatever face pleases, time can consume it, and swelling and bruise can despoil it.

And, to say nothing of death itself, which wears all things down, how much is allowed to diseases, fevers, sores? Those whose hair is now white with a dingy whiteness once did not fear comparison with pitch. The cheeks that hang and mourn with ugly wrinkles once displayed a vain beauty to be gazed at. The foot that now totters, trembling in slack skin, scarcely used to leave a mark pressed on the soft ground. Neck, throat, hands, and what all now shudder at, alas, were once to the wretched a cause of madness. The eyes, unsightly now, which a moist humour bathes, once flashed like the glowing torches of the stars. Look at what flowers for a few years and does not remain, and yet its guilt remains in everlasting tears. Therefore you will despise girlish faces and comely forms with head turned aside or bowed. And that you may be wholly pure in heart as in body, so as to make no one guilty by suspicion, take pains with care and, ever provident, wish that no woman be too closely joined to you. The wind will lose its strength if nothing stands in its way; if fuel is lacking, the fire will be in vain. And lest one part only be thought to be urged by these commands to the right ways of life, whatever men learn, let a woman believe it is said to her: this sex too has its merit and its punishments. Let her hate boldly gazing at unknown faces and yet hide herself from known eyes. For eyes playing with ill-mingled laughter often speak flatteringly while the mouth is silent.

And love, like the tears that injury forces to flow, rises from the eyes and seeks the depths of the breast. Therefore by the law of the precept by which young men are warned, by this let a chaste woman flee all men. Now if with a chaste body you have trampled on the body's allurements, shake off the remaining burden of the heart. For there is wont to steal in, from the gall of black poison, envy, mother of manifold crime. [On envy] Unhappy envy, itself doomed to die, prepared death: through it the angel fell from the citadel of high heaven, and while he hastens to drive man from the heavenly kingdom, he himself first deserved to be thrust down into darkness. Hence came the Lord's avenging sentence upon all; this alone is guilty of all the other deaths: this is the madness of war, this the discord of peace, harming itself more than him whom it cruelly wishes to harm. This, through the great crime of his brothers, was to Joseph the cause first of slavery, then of rule. This stained Cain with the blood of his righteous brother; this was nearly the cause of David's death, when, the war already finished by his strength alone, the father-in-law would not have his son-in-law exalted with praise. Driven by it, the labourer of the first hour, groaning, strives to outdo the digger of the eleventh. This at last gave Christ over to the mockery of the cross, while spite carries out the work of unbelief, and the headlong people see with their gaze the signs and miracles, but do not receive them in their heart. To such a degree had wicked envy, with frenzied zeal, turned all from the truth to crime,

so that they did not fail to know, but were unwilling to believe, that then man was to be glorified through the Lord. [On avarice] Remember next to avoid with no lighter care the countless crime of avarice alone. In all the lands which the sun sees, which the seas enclose, which the days come to, which the darkness covers, in whatever world spreads out unknown to us, in all kingdoms, in all peoples, in the minds of the many infected with the disease, this is the root, cause, head, fount and origin of evil. Whatever the Lord had formed for harmless uses, this has ruined by wrongly changing their offices. Why do you complain of dire harbours and raging winds, of seas grim with notorious shipwrecks? The oak cut down in the woods, its timber old with years, if it is no use for beams, put it on the hearth. And, content with your own, if things are born somewhere in a far-off world, believe patiently that they are denied to you. Both the sea's motions and the cruel storms blowing you will look out on, secure, from a safe shore. You have made the use of nature a vice, you misers, so that good things born for good are evil by wrong use. Iron, born from the earth for earthly service, curved in sickles, rigid in ploughshares, for slaughter and dire deaths, the crimes of wars, we arm with pikes, missiles and swords. We received fire to drive off violent cold, to drive off darkness and to cook our food: we began madly to hurl flames onto roofs and to set them under bodies to burn them,

as though crime were too small a crime in plundering, unless the robber carried off wealth spattered with blood, and ultimate force compelled the wretched with various tortures, when they lose what they have, to tell whether anything is hidden. Avarice has made brothers hateful to brothers, and the life of parents loathsome to their children. To fashion false from true, true from false, this cruel vice teaches through countless snares. Through its doing, while, guilty, he held back part of the gold, Ananias passed wholly into death, and not alone; for an equal punishment joined to the wretched man his partner in the crime of foul falsehood. This has made wretched men at the time of death unable to trust their last judgments. Wills are forged; a witness is sought from all sides, bearing falsehood on his lips, keeping the truth down in his breast. Like seals are engraved; the wicked hand learns, alas, to imitate another's handwriting falsely, so that a father is believed to have become another man's father, and a son cannot be his own father's heir. Under its leadership the adulterer, secure among guards, reaches chaste bedchambers by bribes. Men go to every wickedness with minds and hands ready, if you set gold as the price of the crime. Tell me, I beg, what madness so great loosens the reins (wretched man!), that what is already enough for you is not enough? You hasten to join lands to boundless lands, you who are to be shut in the marble of a little sarcophagus? You strive to grow richer by another's loss? What you seize from others will soon be another's.