Caput XLVII
Scipio's Warning Against Prosperity
Odo cites Scipio's pagan wisdom in sparing Carthage to preserve Roman discipline, then exhorts believers living under grace to embrace steadfastness over the flesh's reluctance.
It is astonishing how well Scipio understood — even though he was a pagan — that outward discipline is necessary for preserving the integrity of our character. He knew that Carthage was a threat to Rome, and yet he refused to let it be destroyed, because he saw that the Romans could be kept in check by that very enemy. For he knew that a false sense of security is dangerous for weak minds, and that fear is a necessary guardian for those who are still like children in need of protection. And this was proved true in actual fact. For once Carthage was destroyed, so many evils arose from Rome's newfound prosperity that seditions, civil wars, bloodshed, and acts of plunder followed so cruelly that the Roman people were devastated more by their own citizens than they ever had been by the Carthaginian enemy. This corruption of the spirit, which is born from favorable circumstances — this overthrow of prosperity and moral integrity — was the very thing Scipio feared would come about. He was pressing to prevent a theater from being built in Rome. For he knew that citizens are easily corrupted through the life of the city, and that is precisely why he wanted the occasion for amusement to be restrained. So if that pagan leader acted this way, what should we be doing? We who, now that grace has been revealed, contemplate the things that are eternal; who are commanded to live by faith; who know that all things work together for good for those who love God; who know that nothing happens by chance, but that all things are ordered by divine providence.✦ If the flesh shrinks from discipline, let it be won over by steadfastness.
The Healing Bitterness of Discipline
Odo develops the image of bitter medicine bringing health, expounding Solomon's proverb about the wound's cleansing and the afflicted mind's inner healing.
That is how it is: when we want to drive away diseases, we are sad, sure enough, to drink the bitter cup, but knowing the health that follows, we rejoice. Because the body can't reach health any other way, in the very act of drinking it swallows even what disgusts it. And when the mind perceives that there is life in the bitterness, troubled as it is by grief, it grows cheerful. That through the scourge both past sins are cleansed and future ones are prevented, Solomon shows, saying: The envy of a wound cleanses away evils, and strokes in the innermost parts of the belly (Prov.✦ XX, 30). By the word 'belly' the mind is signified, because just as the belly is stretched by food, so the mind, puffed up by crooked thoughts, is expanded. The strokes in the innermost parts of the belly are the straits that are produced by outward affliction. Let evils therefore be cleansed away — both the envy of the wound and the strokes in the innermost parts of the belly — because outward discipline washes away faults, and compunction, or the bitterness of eternal striking, pierces through the mind that has been stretched wide by crooked thoughts.1
A Father's Harsh Remedy
Odo recounts Jerome's story of a monk who, unable to quench lust through abstinence, was saved when affliction bound him in place of his desire.
Saint Jerome, in his letter to Rusticus, tells of a certain young man who had been in a monastery and who could not extinguish the flame of the flesh by any abstinence or magnitude of work, but whom the father of the monastery saved by this device. He commanded one of the elders to harass this young man deliberately with frequent insults, and when a year had now passed in this way, the Father, its course completed, asks him his former thoughts.2 But the young man replied: "I am not allowed to live, and yet I would love to fornicate."3 So here was someone who could have been drowned in lust if he had not been bound in place of it by affliction.4
Read the original Latin
Mirum quomodo pro conservanda morum probitate necessariam esse exteriorem disciplinam Scipio, licet paganus, intellexerat, qui Carthaginem Romanis infestam ob hoc nolebat dirui, quo posset ab eisdem Romanis teneri. Sciebat enim infirmis animis periculosam esse securitatem, et terrorem tanquam pupillis necessarium esse tutorem. Quod reipsa probatum est. Deleta quippe Carthagine tanta mox de prosperitate mala exorta sunt, ut et seditiones, et civilia bella et sanguinis effusiones, et rapinae tam crudeliter fierent, ut Romanus populus pejus a suis civibus, quam a Carthaginensibus hostibus vastaretur. Hanc animorum labem, quae de secundis rebus nascitur, hanc prosperitatis et honestatis eversionem isdem Scipio evenire metuebat: quando instabat ne theatrum Romae construeretur. Sciebat enim cives facile per civitatem posse corrumpi, et idcirco ludendi occasionem volebat inhiberi. Ergo si ille sic, nobis quid agendum est, qui revelata jam gratia speculamur quae aeterna sunt, qui vivere jubemur ex fide, qui diligentibus Deum omnia novimus in bonum cooperari, qui scimus nil fortuitis casibus geri, sed cuncta divinitus ordinari. Si horrescit caro disciplinam, persuadeat constantiam.
Sic enim cum morbos pellere cupimus, tristes quidem amarum poculum sumimus, sed certi de subsequenti salute gaudemus. Quia enim ad salutem pervenire corpus aliter non valet, in potu bibit etiam quod taedet. Cumque amaritudini inesse vitam animus conspicit, moerore turbatus hilarescit. Quod enim per flagellum et praeterita peccata purgentur, et futura prohibeantur, Salomon ostendit, dicens: Livor vulneris abstergit, mala et plagae in secretioribus ventris (Prov. XX, 30). Ventris nomine mens significatur, quia sicut venter cibis extenditur, ita mens pravis cogitationibus sublevata dilatatur. Plagae vero in secretioribus ventris angustiae sunt, quae de exteriori afflictione generantur. Abstergentur igitur mala, et livor vulneris et plagae in secretioribus ventris, quia disciplina exterior culpas diluit, et extensam pravis cogitationibus mentem compunctio vel amaritudo aeternae percussionis transfigit.
Sanctus Hieronymus in epistola ad Rusticum, refert quemdam adolescentem in coenobio fuisse, qui nulla abstinentiae vel operis magnitudine flammam poterat carnis exstinguere, quem pater monasterii servavit hac arte. Cuidam de senioribus imperavit, ut hunc ex industria crebris injuriis fatigaret, quem anno jam taliter expleto Pater pristinas cogitationes interrogat. At ille: Vivere, inquit, mihi non licet, et fornicari liberet. Hic itaque lascivia mergi poterat, si loco tribulationis non ligaretur.
Scripture echoes
Notes
- 1 ↩Abstergentur is rendered as a jussive ('Let … be cleansed') to capture the hortatory force; it could also be read as a simple future passive.
- 2 ↩ut with imperavit rendered as purpose ('to…harass'); result reading also possible but purpose is more natural with a command
- 3 ↩et here carries an adversative force — 'and yet' — contrasting the prohibition on living freely with the persistent desire
- 4 ↩The abbot's harsh method is presented as medicinal: affliction restrains lust by redirecting the soul's disordered energy. The young man's complaint in s3 confirms the severity of the approach.
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