Commonitorium (Instruction)

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.511 · 1.541–2.391

1. 1.1Orientius invites the reader who seeks eternal life to learn the way, and prays to Christ, who healed the blind, deaf and dumb, to give him speech.
2. 1.31Balaam, compelled to bless instead of curse, shows that speech comes from Christ; man has two lives, the brief life of the body and the everlasting life won by merit, and is born to seek God.
3. 1.61God is to be known and worshipped not with sacrifices and costly gifts but with faith and praise, as the psalm says; all that is required is to believe in the one God and call on him.
4. 1.91The first commandment, written on stone and renewed by Christ's grace in hearts, is to love God wholly, who made man from clay, gave him body and senses, and made the world and its seasons for him.
5. 1.121All man's comforts, shelter, clothing, food, light, and dominion over fish, birds and beasts, are gifts of God's care.
6. 1.151God asks nothing for all his gifts but love; the second commandment, to love one's neighbour as oneself, binds all, as even animals care for their own kind.
7. 1.181If animals protect one another by nature, men should help one another by God's command; the golden rule, in its negative and positive forms, sums this up, beginning with hospitality to travellers.
8. 1.211The golden rule is applied to clothing the naked and feeding the hungry, to false accusation, theft, violence, broken faith, slander, lending, pride and adultery, which leads to the law of equal punishment.
9. 1.241The law of retaliation was just, though Christ's grace teaches patience and leaves vengeance to God; the reader should live for the life to come and believe that the same bodies will rise, gathered from wherever they lie.
10. 1.271At the Lord's trumpet the same bodies will rise to receive punishment or glory, as the seasons' renewal of woods, vines and grain shows; every man will live forever.
11. 1.301Hell's fire, like burning mountains and ever-flowing springs, punishes forever without consuming; the reader should therefore trample on the world, and above all avoid looking at beautiful faces, since no one handles fire unburned.
12. 1.331Looking leads to desire; woman was the first occasion of sin through the serpent's guile, beauty ruined Troy and nearly Rome, and Scripture shows its harm in Shechem and David.
13. 1.361Further examples of the harm of beauty: David, Tamar and her brothers, Solomon, Haman and Esther, Holofernes and Judith, Samson, and the Levite's concubine; the apostle lays down strict rules even for marriage.
14. 1.391The married and the celibate stand differently before God; against temptation the cross, prayer and tears are the weapons; the poet speaks from experience, and Scripture says that all flesh is grass.
15. 1.421Age and disease destroy beauty, but the guilt of sin remains; men should avoid looking at women and being too close to any, and women should take the same warnings to themselves.
16. 1.451Envy, through which the devil fell and brought death on all, caused Joseph's slavery, Cain's murder, Saul's pursuit of David, the grumbling of the vineyard labourers, and the crucifixion of Christ.
17. 1.481Avarice, the root of all evil everywhere, turns God's harmless gifts to wrong use: trade sends men to shipwreck, iron is made into weapons, and fire is used to burn houses and bodies.
18. 1.511Avarice drives men to murder, torture, family hatred and fraud, as with Ananias and Sapphira; it forges wills, bribes the way to adultery, and makes men add land to land though a small tomb awaits them.
19. 1.541Lavish houses, vessels and clothes add nothing to rest or need; wealth stays in the world, so it should be given away while one is alive and sent ahead to heaven.
20. 1.571Treasure laid up in heaven is safe; Christ says that what is done to the needy is done to him, and even a cup of cold water or a prayer counts; the Lord also taught all to be joined by the love of peace.
21. 1.601Peace holds the warring elements of the world together and binds a people under its ruler; the poet, calling himself the worst of sinners, urges the reader to love peace and let no grudge outlast the day.
22. 2.1Book 2 opens: whoever follows these admonitions will tread on the serpent and meet Christ the judge; the chief task is to despise human praise, seek approval from Christ alone, and return no evil for evil, as Christ, Stephen and James prayed for their killers.
23. 2.31Do not judge others while blind to one's own faults; do not lie, for the lying mouth kills the soul; restrain gluttony, which made our first parents mortal, and above all drunkenness.
24. 2.61A picture of drunkenness and its shame, the waste that could feed the poor, and the reply to the reader who finds these demands hard: heaven is not reached without great labour.
25. 2.91If men endure so much hardship, waiting at doors and paying bribes, for brief worldly honours that soon pass to others, they should endure labour for the heavenly prize.
26. 2.121Worldly honour ends and is forgotten; labour for Christ bears lasting fruit, for God promises rewards no eye has seen, greater even than the fragrant gifts he gives sinners on earth.
27. 2.151Heaven's rewards surpass anything the mind can picture; life is short and the end is near, as the barbarian invasions show, which spared no place and brought death by treachery, violence, hunger and fire.
28. 2.181All Gaul burned on one pyre; but beyond such disasters, death comes to everyone hour by hour, as a candle burns down unnoticed.
29. 2.211However long life lasts, it ends, and at death a short life and a long one are the same; yet the old cling to life and watch others die as if death did not concern them.
30. 2.241Death takes parents, wives, brothers and sons out of order, yet men put off thinking of it; happy is he who can face the judgment unafraid, whereas there the powerful and luxurious, whose god was their belly, will stand.
31. 2.271Those who neglected God will suffer punishments fitted to their deeds in gehenna, darkness, fire and ice, each sin paid for separately, unlike earthly justice, which can kill only once.
32. 2.301The wicked are punished even before the judgment, and idolaters most of all, with undying worms and smoke; the gentle and charitable will shine like the sun in white robes, above all those who kept their baptism chaste.
33. 2.331The martyrs, priests and monks will follow the Lamb in shining glory; at the trumpet of the judgment the earth will split, fire and hail fall, and all generations will assemble, each line led together.
34. 2.361All souls from the beginning of the world will be gathered before Christ, enthroned in the flesh he took to heaven, and he will pronounce the final sentence on the just and the wicked.
35. 2.391Orientius confesses that he should have taught by his life, promises heaven to those who keep his counsels and believe in the Trinity, and asks every reader to pray for him.