Caput III
The Universal Fire of Greed
Odo shows how the pursuit of riches has become humanity's consuming idol, a flame that no one can extinguish and everyone fans, driving both rich and poor to insatiable madness.
And in that same glory, riches especially seem most worth pursuing. Because clearly health and life, thirst and hunger, homeland and relatives and friends, and everything altogether that people consider more advantageous than riches — that's what most people have concluded they are. And this saying holds not only on land and sea, as John Chrysostom says, but rises all the way up to the clouds themselves and the stars.1 Which is clearly no longer just a saying now, but a flame that lays waste to this entire world. And there's no one who could put it out — but everyone fans the flame and sets it ablaze more and more. Those who are captured by this evil are not the only ones who favor it — but also those who don't yet seem to have entered that place.2 For even the rich themselves, even if it were possible for each one to possess the whole world, would still burn with desire for it. The poor, on the other hand, while they long to be made equal to the rich, suffer an insatiable frenzy of greed — they go mad, they rage, and the same disease produces different ailments in different people.3
The Sweet Snare That Devours Love
The love of money is so sweet and so supreme among disordered affections that it destroys every bond of friendship, kinship, and marriage, and drives those who pursue it to flee from the very counsel that would lead them to the kingdom of God within.
And the love of money exhausts every soul to such a degree that it leaves no room for friendships, for family, sometimes not even for a spouse, or for the love of children. Among all human affections, nothing is valued above these. This love seems sweeter than honey itself: and when it obeys those who have given their hands to it — setting a thousand snares — it is nevertheless sought after and desired by all, and they rejoice to reach its door at last through countless labors and even deaths. And if anyone has tried to persuade them to seek better things and the kingdom of God, which is within us, they flee, and consider it madness, and like madmen they surrender themselves all the more to what this insanity drives them toward.✦
Children Clutching Shadows
Those who pursue worldly wealth are like children who refuse to leave their games — yet far more inexcusable, since they knowingly embrace nothingness and wallow in filth more shamefully than beasts.
With the utmost greed, then, they embrace shadows and clutch at the wind — like children at play, or certainly more foolish still. Those children, perhaps driving a squadron with blows, or delighting in some other game suited to their tender age, refuse to be torn away from it. But these people are all the more inexcusable, in that they knowingly place their trust in nothing, and like pigs delight to wallow in its mire — more wretched and more shameful, certainly, than those animals which feed on mud.
Read the original Latin
In eadem autem gloria maxime divitiae videntur appetendae. Quia videlicet sanitate, et vita, et siti, et fame, et patria, et propinquis, amicisque, et omnibus omnino que sunt commodiores eas esse pluribus visum est. Et ista sententia non solum terra marique servatur, ut Joannes Chrysostomus ait, sed usque ad ipsas nubes ascendit ac sidera. Quae videlicet non tam sententia jam est, quam flamma, quae totum istum vastat orbem terrarum. Et qui exstinguat quidem nullus est, qui vero accendant et magis magisque inflamment, omnes. Favent autem huic malo non solum illi qui ab eo capti sunt; sed et qui nondum videntur illuc ingressi. Nam et ipsi divites, etiam si totum orbem possibile esset possideri a singulis, adhuc tamen in desiderio ejus arderent. Pauperes vero dum cupiunt divitibus exaequari, insatiabilem concupiscentiae rabiem patiuntur, insaniunt, et furiunt, et idem morbus diversos singulis generat languores.
Et intantum amor pecuniae omnem fatigat animam, ut neque amicitiarum, neque propinquitatis, interdum etiam nec conjugis, aut amori filiorum det locum. Quibus affectibus inter homines nihil praefertur. Hic amor ipso melle dulcior videtur: et cum ei qui manus illi dederint mille foveas paret, expetitur tamen, et desideratur ab omnibus, ac per innumeros labores et mortes laetantur se vel ad ejus januam quandoque pertingere. Et si quis eos ad meliora, et ad regnum Dei, quod intra nos est, quaerendum persuadere tentaverit, refugiunt, et insanum putant, et quasi phrenetici ad hoc quod insania suggerit magis se submittunt. Summa igitur aviditate amplexantur umbras, et stringunt ventos, similes videlicet pueris ludentibus, vel certe stultiores. Illi forte turmam verberibus agitantes, vel quemlibet alium ludum per aetatem fragilem delectantes, avelli ab eo nolunt. At isti tanto inexcusabile sunt, quanto scienter in nihili confidunt, et in coeno ejus tanquam sues volutari delectant, infeliciores utique et turpiores illis animalibus quae coeno vescuntur existentes.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Luke.17.21 — nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There!' for behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst.
Notes
- 1 ↩The 'saying' (sententia) refers to the common opinion that earthly goods outweigh riches — a conviction so widespread it pervades the entire created order in the author's rhetoric.
- 2 ↩'That place' (illuc) likely refers to the state of being consumed by avarice — the author suggests that even those who appear free from it are already complicit.
- 3 ↩The author's rhetoric here is deliberately paradoxical: the poor, in desiring equality with the rich, are themselves consumed by the same avarice they observe. The 'disease' (morbus) of greed is one and the same, but it manifests differently depending on one's station.
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