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Chapter 24ErudR.1.24

Nonum capitulum, ubi ponuntur exempla naturalia de comparatione malorum ministerialium et officialium qui sunt in curiis.

The Insatiable Greed of Court Ministers

Court officials are likened to leeches, sponges, and strainers that drain the poor of their wealth, accumulating sin for themselves while passing luxuries to their lords, and are granted multiple offices to maximize their power to exploit.

Now then, if it pleases you, let us illustrate the character of these court ministers with a few examples, so that their perversity may stand out more clearly through plain evidence. They are leeches of the poor, constantly drinking the blood of others — shameless dogs, suffering from the vice of gluttony, setting no limit to their satisfaction. They suffer from dropsy, that vice whose thirst is difficult or impossible to quench, because the more they drink, the more they thirst for water.1 They are like a sponge in the hand of the one who squeezes it — or rather like strainers that funnel the wealth they frequently extract from the poor into the laps of their lords, and through their accursed acquisitions they keep nothing for themselves except the filth of sin.2 For what they accumulate through the labor of the poor and pass on to their lords turns into luxuries for the one and torment for the wretched ministers.3 And to give them greater license or power to do harm, each one is given multiple offices or authority, so that what one cannot strip or take away by virtue of a single office, one may be able to seize from another.

The Locust's Metamorphosis as Image of Corrupt Officials

The three life-stages of the locust — brucus, athelabus, and locust — are described and then applied allegorically to court ministers who, in their various stages of advancement, consume the resources of the poor and ravage many places.

In the characteristics of animals, however, we have found that from the locust is born the brucus — so called by the sophisogia — because it is named brucus until it has wings. Then, as the wings grow in, once it has begun to fly, it is called athelabus. As time goes on, when it flies most fully, it is reckoned by name as a locust. The brucus, therefore — being heavier than the athelabus and the locust — wherever it has come and wherever it has settled, since it does not have wings, there it remains until it entirely consumes the crops it finds. The athelabus and the locust, while they have gone around various places, inflict various harms. This figure applies to the ministers of the courts. For the same individual frequently becomes, in turn, brucus and athelabus and locust. The brucus, because once it has begun to oppress a poor man, does not depart from him until it has consumed his entire resources; the locust and the athelabus, because they harm many places.

The Swarm of Locusts and the Scripture of Devastation

Drawing on Joel's image of successive devourers and Solomon's observation that the locust has no king, the passage compares the unchecked multitude of court officials to a locust swarm that devours crops and fruit-bearing trees without restraint.

Hence it is written: the caterpillar eats what the grub leaves behind, and the locust eats what the caterpillar leaves behind.✦ Without doubt, we see a great multitude of court officials just as in summer the swarm of locusts appears — and because, perhaps as Solomon says, the locust has no king, since no ruler restrains the violence or tyranny of these people, the whole swarm marches out in squadrons, and they devour not only the crops of the Egyptians but, in the land of Jessen, fruit-bearing trees as well.✦

Unclean Birds as Emblems of Court Corruption

Court officials are compared to the unclean birds forbidden by Levitical law — eagles of pride and rapacity, hawks of petty tyranny over the defenseless, and kites that ambush the unwary with cunning arguments.

Now if we compare these men to birds, they will bring to mind the birds that were forbidden as food to the children of Israel because of their uncleanness.✦ They are like eagles — soaring above what is right through pride, and swooping down with force to seize their prey through plunder. It is well known of the eagle that wherever a carcass is, it is immediately there.✦ In this same class, certain lesser hawks also play their part, since they are violent only toward the poor — showing in their dealings with others not a willingness to serve but only a drive to dominate. The hawk lives on plunder, but because it is lacking in strength, it does what it can, not what it desires. And so it is hostile only to the small birds over which it has advantage. Kites represent those who work through ambush — lying in wait for the unwary, using the shrewdest arguments against the poor, or deceiving them when they speak too carelessly. When the kite wants to seize its prey, it comes upon its victim unexpectedly, and in every act of plunder it relies almost entirely on ambush, because it is not backed by strength.

Vultures, Ravens, and Gulls: The Court's Feast on Ruin

Further unclean birds — vultures that feed on battle-corpses, ravens black with sin, gulls at home in war and luxury, and mergansers absorbed in fleshly pleasure — are applied to courtiers who thrive on conflict and dissolution, with a closing plea that holy courtiers not take offense.

And while such people long for seditions and wars, they represent the vulture, which, while it rejoices in quarrels and battles, follows the army because of the corpses of battles.4 Men of the raven kind — black with the stains of sins, feeding on the deaths of others. The gull is a bird that lives both in water and on land: just as a bird flies and a water creature swims, so these people, worn down in the labors of their own armies, are as if on dry land, but dissolved in the luxury of wantonness, they swim in the wet.5 They represent the mergansers, which linger longer under the waves, in that they are completely absorbed in the pleasures of the flesh. The other uncleannesses in the law, designated among birds and animals.6 It would be a long task to pursue all of them, yet it would be easy enough to adapt them to the characteristics of these people — only, let them not be indignant, I beg you, courtiers.78 For we do not accuse holy men — those who live in courts we acknowledge to be free of this perversity — but especially those who are of this kind.9

Read the original Latin

Nunc, si placet, istorum ministerialium mores aliquibus declaremus exemplis, ut eorum perversitas magis appareat judiciis manifestis. Isti sunt sanguisugae pauperum, bibentes assidue sanguinem alienum, canes impudentes bolismi vitium patientes, satietati terminum non ponentes, ydropisis patientes vitium, quorum sitim sedari est difficile vel impossibile, quia quo plus sunt potae plus sitiuntur aquae. Isti sunt quasi spongia in manu prementis, imrao quasi quaedam collatoria divitias quas extrahunt fréquenter dominis suis iniluentes, et execrandis acquisitionibus nihil sibi praeter peccati feculentiam retinentes. Quod enim accumulant per operationem pauperum dominis suis cedit in delicias et miseris ministerialibus in tormentum. Et ut eis major sit nocendi licentia vel facultas datur unicuique multiplex officium vel potestas, ut quod ex uno non tollit officio spoliare vel tollere possit ex alio.

In propiïetatibus autem animalium repperimus quod ex locusta nascitur brucus, quoniam brucum sophisogia nominat donec alas habeat. Deinde, alis subcrescentibus, cum volitare coeperit vocatur athelabus. Succedente vero tempore, cum volât plenissime, locustae censetur nomine. Brucus igitur, utpote athelabo et locusta gravior, quocumque venerit, et ubi insederit, quoniam alas non habet, ibi permanet, donec fruges quas invenit omnino consumit. Athelabus et locusta dum diversa loca circuierint diversa inferunt nocumenta. Ministerialibus curiarum competit haec figura. Nam idem numero fréquenter efficitur brucus et athelabus et locusta. Brucus ideo quia, cum opprimere coeperit pauperem, non recedit ab eo donec totam ejus consummaverit facultatem ; locusta et athelabus, quia nocent locis in pluribus.

Unde scriptum est : Residuum erucae comedit brucus, residuum bruci comedit locusta. Tantam procul dubio videmus multitudinem ministerialium sicut in aestate apparet copia locustarum, et quia forte, secundum Salomonem, regem locusta non habet, quia princeps violentiam aut tyrannidem istorum non cohibet, ideo egreditur universa per turmas et non solum Egiptorum corrodunt gramina, sed in terra Jessen arbores fructuosas.

Hos autem si avibus comparemus, repraesentabunt aves quae in esum filiis Israël propter earum immunditiam prohibentur. Aquilae enim sunt, volando super jus per superbiam, et cum impetu dum praedam acquirunt, descendunt inferius per rapinam. De aquila enim certum est quod ubi cadaver fuerit statim adest. In hoc etiam inter eos quidam minores alieti gerunt ymaginem, quoniam in solos pauperes violenti, ostendunt in aliis non voluntatem sibi déesse sed solummodo potestatem. Nam alietus rapina pascitur, sed, quia viribus destituitur, quod potest agit, non quod appétit. Unde et minutis tantum avibus quibus praevalet infestus existit. Milvos repraesentant per insidias, dum insidiantur incautis, dum utuntur in pauperes astussimis argumentis, aut dum eos decipi unt, dum illi " incautius verba proferunt. Milvus enim cum rapere voluerit improvisus advenit, et in omni rapina sua fere insidiis nititur, quia viribus non fulcitur.

Et dum taies seditiones et guerras affectant, vulturem repraesentant, qui, dum rixis gaudet et bellis, sequitur exercitum propter cadavera praeliorum. Homines corvini generis, nigri peccatorum maculis, qui pascuntur in mortibus alienis. Larus est aies et in aqua et in terra vivens,quia sicut avis volât, sicut aquatile natat, quia dum in exercitiorum suorum laboribus atteruntur sunt velut in arido, sed dum luxu petulantiae resolvuntur natant in humido. Mergulos se exhibent, qui sub undis diutius îmmorantur, in eo quod carnis voluptatibus penitus absorbentur. Ceteras legis immunditias in avibus et animalibus designatas. Longum esset prosequi, quas tamen istorum proprietatibus satis esset facile adaptariNec indignentur raihi, obsecro, curiales. Non enim viros sanctos arguimus quos in curiis habitantes confitemur hujus perversitatis immunes, sed illos specialiter qui sunt taies.

Scripture echoes

  1. ↩Joel.1.4 — What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten; and what the swarming locust left, the young locust has eaten; and what the young locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.
  2. ↩Prov.30.27 — The locust has no king, yet all of them go out in ranks.
  3. ↩Lev.11.13-Lev.11.19;Deut.14.11-Deut.14.18 — And these you shall detest among the birds: they shall not be eaten; they are detestable—the eagle, the vulture, and the black vulture. Lev.11.14 — and the kite, and the falcon after its kind Lev.11.15 — every kind of raven Lev.11.16 — and the daughter of the ostrich, and the hawk, and the kite, and the falcon according to its kind Lev.11.17 — and the little owl, and the cormorant, and the great owl Lev.11.18 — and the white owl, and the pelican, and the vulture Lev.11.19 — and the stork, the heron according to its kind, the hoopoe, and the bat. Deut.14.11 — Every clean bird you may eat. Deut.14.12 — And these are the ones you shall not eat: the eagle, the ossifrage, and the osprey. Deut.14.13 — And the glede, and the kite, and the vulture after its kind, Deut.14.14 — and every kind of raven Deut.14.15 — And the daughter of the ostrich, and the owl, and the gull, and the hawk after its kind, Deut.14.16 — the horned owl, the screech owl, and the barn owl Deut.14.17 — and the pelican, and the carrion vulture, and the cormorant Deut.14.18 — and the stork, and the heron after its kind, and the hoopoe, and the bat
  4. ↩Matt.24.28 — Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.

Notes

  1. 1 ↩Bolismi (gluttony) is a rare word; rendered per gloss. The dropsy metaphor (ydropisis) follows a common medieval medical-moral comparison for insatiable appetite.
  2. 2 ↩The form imrao is uncertain in the source; treated as a transitional particle and rendered with 'or rather' to preserve the corrective tone.
  3. 3 ↩The sentence carries an ironic double edge: the wealth becomes delight for the lords but torment (spiritual or otherwise) for the ministers themselves. The ambiguity is preserved rather than resolved.
  4. 4 ↩taies: uncertain form, possibly a corruption or rare word; sense uncertain but rendered as 'such people' to preserve the flow of the passage.
  5. 5 ↩The sentence is complex and somewhat strained in the Latin; the translation follows the structure as closely as possible while keeping it readable.
  6. 6 ↩This sentence appears to be a fragment or a heading-like statement; it likely refers back to the symbolic use of unclean animals in Levitical law.
  7. 7 ↩The source text 'adaptariNec' appears to be a concatenation of 'adaptari' and 'Nec' due to a missing space; the translation reads 'adaptari' as an infinitive and 'Nec' as the conjunction 'and not / only'.
  8. 8 ↩raihi: uncertain form, possibly a corruption; rendered as vocative addressing courtiers, following the clearer 'curiales' that follows.
  9. 9 ↩taies: uncertain form, possibly a corruption or rare word; rendered as 'of this kind' to preserve the contrast the author is drawing.

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