Caput XXIV
The Duty to Speak Truth to Power
Odo, invoking Gregory the Nazianzen, challenges the powerful to accept priestly correction, arguing that spiritual authority surpasses earthly rank and that heavenly things must not be subordinated to temporal power.
Those who are more powerful indeed must be addressed all the more cautiously, by just how much more freely they are allowed to lead their lives, and by just how much they themselves, through their own power as a kind of material for being proud, are spurred on — lest they humble themselves. With these words, then, let the sayings of Gregory the Nazianzen, which he speaks in Jeremiah, be brought forward. My address is directed to you. What will you say, then? Do you think you'll put up with it — that I don't deal with you according to status, but truthfully? Or will you gladly accept that the law of Christ places you under priestly authority? For he gave us an authority far more perfect than your tribunals. Or surely it's not right that heavenly things should be surpassed by what is earthly?
The Shepherd's Care for Every Sheep
Odo reminds the powerful that they are equally sheep of Christ's flock, placed before the sacred altars, and that greater care is owed to them precisely because their conduct affects the salvation or destruction of many.
So I ask you patiently: accept our freedom of speech. Know this — whoever you are — that you are a sheep of my flock, numbered among my sheep by Christ, the supreme Shepherd given to me, and sealed by the Holy Spirit. Know that you are placed with reverence before the sacred altars, under the hands of the priest.1 Know that you owe worship and faith to the blessed Trinity. We don't want to seem partial — as if we were teaching only the lowly and entrusting ourselves to your power, or using the freedom Christ gave us in the Church toward them and not toward you. Otherwise we would seem to be looking out for their interests while despising and neglecting you. For which group, then, is greater care appropriate? I say greater care — by just how much it concerns the destruction of many if anything goes wrong on your part, and again, by how much the salvation of many is provided for when you hold fast to justice and mercy. You, O man — though you've been placed above others, you are equal by nature with them. Remember, then, how much you owe to God, who granted you power over those who are your equals.
The Sword Given for Restraint, Not Pride
Drawing on Job and Isaiah, Odo teaches that earthly power is God's instrument to threaten and restrain oppressors of the humble, warning that rulers who turn from justice face divine judgment.
Don't pay attention to what you're capable of doing, but to what you ought to do. For you carry a sword by God's arrangement — not to strike, but to threaten — and would that you return it unstained to Christ who entrusts it to you, who for this reason grants power from God, so that those whom the holy Church's authority does not suffice to restrain from oppressing the poor by its own strength, it may threaten into compliance through their support.2 From this comes God's word to Job: Can the wild ox serve you, or will it break up the clods of the valleys after you?✦3 (Job 39:9.) Understand this: just as after me — for the power is not man's but God's — so anyone powerful to the advancement of heavenly discipline should humble his own summit of power, and exercise it, and restrain the oppressors of the humble like clods of earth.4 But what will happen? For according to Isaiah, whoever turns away from evil is exposed as plunder.5 Princes, associates of thieves, love bribes; they do not judge the cause of the orphan or the widow — and to them Wisdom says through the scriptures: You who please yourselves in the crowds, power was given you by God, who will examine your deeds and thoughts, for when you were ministers of that kingdom, you did not judge rightly, nor did you walk according to the will of God.6
The Terrible Judgment Awaiting the Mighty
Odo closes with the sobering warning from the Wisdom of Solomon that those in authority face a harsher judgment, for while mercy is granted to the lowly, stronger torment awaits the powerful.
Terribly and swiftly it will appear to you, because a very hard judgment will fall upon those who are in charge (Wis. 6:3–6). For to the lowly one mercy is granted, and to the stronger a stronger torment presses close.
Read the original Latin
Potentiores quidem tanto cautius alloquendi sunt, quanto et laxiorem vitam ducere permittuntur, et ipsi sua potentia veluti quadam superbiendi materia ne se humilient incitentur. His ergo verba Gregorii Nazianzeni, quae in Jeremia loquitur ita proferantur. Ad vos mihi sermo convertitur. Quid ergo dicetis? putasne patiemini, ut non secundum personam, sed veraciter agam vobiscum? An libenter accipietis quod lex Christi sacerdotali vos subjicit potestati? Dedit enim nobis potestatem multo perfectiorem tribunalibus vestris. Aut nunquid justum est, ut a terreno coelestia superentur?
ergo patienter quaeso, accipite, libertatem nostram. Scito te, quisquis es, ovem gregis esse mei a Christo mihi summo pastore annumeratam, et a sancto Spiritu consignatam. Scito te inter sacra altaria cum veneratione subjici manibus sacerdotis. Scito beatae Trinitati cultum fidemque debere. Nolumus inaequales quidem videri, ut abjectos videlicet doceamus, et vestrae potentiae credamus, aut erga illos et non erga vos utamur libertate, quam nobis Christus in Ecclesia dedit: alioquin illis potius consulere, vos vero despicere ac negligere videremur. Quorum itaque majorem curam habere dignum est? tanto, inquam, majorem, quanto ad multorum perniciem pertinet, si quid a vobis erratur, et rursus multorum saluti consulitur, in quibus justitiam tenueritis et clementiam. Tu, o homo, qui, licet aliis praelatus sis, aequalis tamen natura tibi est cum illis; memento igitur quantum Deo debitor sis, qui tibi super aequales tribuit potestatem.
Noli attendere quid potes agere, sed quid debes. Ipsius enim dispositione gladium portas, non ut ferias, sed ut commineris, quem utinam impollutum restituas commendatori Christo, qui idcirco potestatem divinitus tribuit, ut quos sanctae Ecclesiae auctoritas propter propriam virtutem ab oppressione pauperum frenare non sufficit, per istorum opitulationem comminuat. Hinc Deus ad Job: Nunquid valet rhinoceros servire tibi, aut confringet glebas vallium post te? (Job XXXIX, 9.) Subaudi: sicut post me, quia non hominis, sed Dei virtus est, ut potens quilibet ad coelestis disciplinae provectum potentiae suae culmen humiliet, et exerceat, oppressoresque humilium quasi glebas refrenet. Sed quid fiet? Nam juxta Isaiam, qui a malo recedit praedae patet. Principes socii furum diligunt munera, pupillo et viduae non judicant, quibus per Sapientiam dicitur: O vos qui placetis vobis in turbis, data est vobis potestas a Deo, qui interrogabit opera et cogitationes vestras, quoniam cum essetis ministri regni illius, non recte judicastis, neque secundum voluntatem Dei ambulastis.
Horrende et cito apparebit vobis quoniam judicium durissimum in his qui praesunt fiet (Sap. VI, 3-6). Exiguo enim conceditur misericordia, et fortioribus fortior instat cruciatus.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Job.39.9 — Will the wild ox be willing to serve you, or will it lodge at your feeding trough?
Notes
- 1 ↩cum + ablative of manner: rendered as 'with reverence' to capture the attendant circumstance of veneration.
- 2 ↩The sword is a metaphor for ecclesiastical or governing authority, entrusted by Christ and exercised through divine arrangement. The final ut-clause (ut...comminuat) expresses purpose/result: the threat of that authority restrains those who oppress the poor, since the Church's moral authority alone is not enough.
- 3 ↩Rhinoceros in the Vulgate (Job 39:9–10) is traditionally understood as the wild ox (unicornis/boeuf sauvage), a creature impossible to tame or put to domestic use. The image illustrates that divinely granted power cannot be pressed into human service on human terms.
- 4 ↩Subaudi ('understand/imply') introduces an interpretive gloss on the Job citation. The sense is that those who hold power for heavenly discipline must not exalt themselves but use that God-given power to restrain those who oppress the humble — the image of clods (glebas) recalls the untamable wild ox breaking up valley soil, now turned against oppressors.
- 5 ↩Alludes to Wisdom/Sirach tradition about withdrawal from evil and vulnerability; attributed to Isaiah in the source. Exact citation unresolved.
- 6 ↩The embedded quotation beginning 'O vos qui placetis vobis in turbis' echoes Wisdom 6:5–6 (Vulgate Sapientia 6:3–6), where God addresses rulers who received power and will be strictly judged. The attribution 'per Sapientiam' confirms the deuterocanonical source.
Collationes (Conferences / Collations) companion
Day 11 and onward, delivered every morning
All 140 conferences — and the rest of the Sub Rosa library — in daily portions in the free Chosen Portion iOS app
Odo urged a daily return to sacred reading as the cure for the soul's slow decline; Chosen Portion makes that daily return a scheduled habit on your phone.
- Continue through all three books of the Conferences at 5 minutes a day
- Daily examination-style readings drawn from 78+ historic works
- One morning notification to keep the practice going past day 10