Undecimum capitulum, de malis quae faciunt adulatores in curiis.
The Poison in the Court
Flatterers swarm the courts, pouring poison into willing ears and driving away all who speak the truth.
We grieve deeply that in the courts of princes and barons this breed of flatterers and sellers of oil abounds — those who fatten the heads of sinners while they pour the poison of flattery into delicate ears, and who deceive with smooth talk those who, having rejected the testimony of truth, welcome falsehood, just as it is written:1234 A willing ear will readily let in even a small drop of poison drawn from our nature and its vice. It immediately drives away everyone who speaks the truth.
Cushions for the Wicked
Drawing on Isaiah and Gregory the Great, the text exposes how flatterers prop up vice with praise, and argues that true charity wounds rather than flatters.
They tuck cushions under their lords' heads, and there, deceived, they rest easy for a while on gentle words, as Scripture says: Woe to those who slide a cushion under every elbow and lay a pillow under every head, to trap souls. For as blessed Gregory says both in his Moralia and in the Pastoral: Whoever flatters people who are doing wrong places a cushion under the elbow or under the head of the one lying down, so that the person who should have been called out for a fault, propped up by praise, may rest easy in that very fault. For princes build a wall that flatterers plaster over, because whatever those princes do crookedly, the flatterers on the outside make it look gleaming, as it were, with the trowel of a flattering tongue. But now let Solomon's counsel be heeded: Better are the wounds of one who loves than the deceitful kisses of one who hates.✦ Who then should be angry at, or want to resent, a friend who speaks the truth? For even though hatred sometimes produces truth, it does not achieve this where charity supplies the freedom to speak. Holy love burns against vices and speaks out, and it attacks all the more fiercely those whom it is shown to love the most. To spare the vices of friends is flattery, not love; and not to rebuke those we love savors not so much of friendship as of madness.
The Closed Ear and the Shifting Mask
Flatterers gradually blind the inner eye and stop the ears, rendering a person's salvation despaired of, while they themselves shift shape like a theatrical Proteus.
Flatterers, however, are all the more to be guarded against, because under the guise of a friend they never stop doing harm — until the light of the inner eye is obscured and the ears are stopped up so that they cannot hear the truth. But as Cicero says: when a person's ears are closed to the truth so that he cannot hear what is true, that person's salvation is to be despaired of. They bring forth everything to suit another's whim, but little to serve the firm ground of truth; and under the image of love, as long as there is a gesture, a facial expression, and a bearing to disguise, they transform these through theatrical artifice, presenting to us another Proteus.
The Mirror of Shared Feeling
Flatterers mimic every emotion for effect, yet true friendship springs from a union of wills, and it is strange that princes trust another's tongue over their own conscience.
You laugh? He's shaken with even greater laughter. He weeps if he's seen a friend's tears. For it knows that the streams of friendship spring from a union of wills and feelings. About this, however, I very much wonder that a king or a people who entrust themselves to him are less satisfied with the judgment of their own conscience than with the flattery of someone else's tongue. And in order to be welcomed into goodwill, these hunters of novelty gather little rumors, watch for the right time and place, and over a meal or when they see the princes in good spirits, they pour them into their ears.5
The Purity of True Love
True love arising from charity and integrity is never partial, and even a secular poet mocks those who mistake flattery for praise.
But let this be far from me — that I should accuse love of being partial, or even that it should seek to please the powerful — as long as it arises from the breadth of charity, from purity of mind, from a habit of integrity, from the practice of duty, from the way of virtue, from the fruit of faithful service, and from honesty of speech. And yet even a secular poet mocks people who believe such things — indeed, that shepherd introduced in the poet's work:
Trust Yourself, Not the Flatterer
The counsel of self-knowledge warns against believing others' praise over one's own honest judgment.
The shepherds call me a poet too — but I'm not so ready to believe them.6 As someone says: Don't believe what others say about you more than you believe yourself.
The Dissolving Heart
Both flatterer and flattered are at fault; self-flattery opens the door to foreign snares, and the sheer multitude of flatterers now triumphs over the armed.
Both are at fault: the one who corrupts his tongue with flattery, and the one who goes along with it. Their hearts melt with delight at the flatterers' words. No one would be caught by the snares of a foreign tongue unless he were first flattering himself within. This is why a soft people and defenseless princes and barons — though they are the ones being overcome — today triumph over armed men. And I'd rightly call them a people, since their numbers are so vast that if anyone dares to murmur against them, sheer numbers defend them — phalanxes locked shield to shield.
Read the original Latin
Dolemus quamplurimum in curiis principum et baronum genus hoc habundare palponum, venditorum olei qui capita peccatorum impinguant dum auribus delicatis toxicum adulationis instillant, eosque blanditiis linguae decipiunt qui rejecto testimonio veritatis falsitatem acceptant, sicut script um est :
Facilem distillât in aurem Exiguum de naturae vitiique veneno. Continuo cunctos abigit qui vera locuntur.
Pulvillos sub dominorum suorum capitibus ponunt, ubi decepti mollibus verbis suaviter pro tempore requiescunt, sicut Scriptura dicit : Vae illis qui constituunt pulvillos sub omni cubito manus, et faciunt cervicalia sub omni capite ad capiendas animas. Sicut enim dicit beatus Gregorius tam in moralibus quatn in pastorali : Quisquis maie agentibus adulatur, pulvillum sub cubito vel sub capite jacentis ponit, ut qui corripi ex culpa debuerat in ea fultus laudibus molliter quiescat. Principes enim parietem aedificant quem adulatores liniunt, quia quod illi perverse faciunt, isti exterius trulla linguae adulatoriae quasi lucidum reddunt. Sed nunc attendatur consilium Salomonis : Meliora sunt vulnera diligentis quam fraudujlenta oscula odientis. Quis igitur debeat aut velit irasci amico vera dicenti ? Nam etsi odium parit veritas, non tamen hoc agit ubi libertatem loquendi suggerit caritas. In odium etenim vitiorum sanctus amor ignescit et loquitur, et in illos magis invehitur quos magis diligere comprobatur. Amicorum parcere vitiis adulatio est non dilectio, nec tam amicitiam quam amentiam sapit non redarguere quos amamus.
Adulatores autèm eo amplius caventur quo sub amantis specie nocere non desinunt, donec lumen interioris oculi obtendatur et aures ne verum audiant obturentur. Sed ut ait Cicero : Cujus aures clausae sunt veritati ut verum audire non possit, ejus salus desperanda est. Omnia proférant ad " alienae libitum voluntatis, parum ad solidum veritatis, et sub amoris ymagine dum gestum, vultum et habitum transfigurant per modum hystrionicum alterum nobis Prothea repraesentant.
Rides ? Majore cachinno Concutitur. Flet si lacrimas inspexit amici.
Novit enim ex voluntatum et sensuum unione rivulos amicitiae scaturire. De hoc tamen admodum miror quod regem aut populum qui sibi credat habent, minus acquiescentem propriae judicio conscientiae quam linguae lenocinio alienae. Et ut in benevolentiam admittantur aucupes novitatum rumusculos congerunt, tempus et locum observant, et inter prandendum aut cum exhilaratos principes viderint, auribus eorum instillant.
Absit autem hoc ut ego benivolentiam arguam, vel etiamsi placere magnatis, dum tamen istud existât ex latitudine caritatis, ex puritate mentis, ex habitu honestatis, officiorum studiis, virtutis via, obsequiorum fructu, integritate sermonis. Eos autem qui talibus credunt etiam poeta saecularis irridet, immo pastor ille qui introducitur in poeta :
Me quoque dicunt Vatem pastores : sed non ego credulus illis.
Nam ut quidam ait :
Plus aliis de te quam tu tibi credere noli.
Uterque enim in vitio est, et qui linguam adulatione polluit, et qui favens t . eis cor in laetitiam ad eorum dicta resolvit . Nullus enim alienae linguae Va tendiculis caperetur nisi sibi interius blandiretur. Inde est quod mollis populus et inhermis principes et barones superans, triumphat hodie de armatis. Et bene populum dixerim, cum tanta sit eorum copia ut si qui adversus eos mutire audeat, illos Defendat numerus, junctaeque umbone phalanges.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Prov.27.6 — Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.
Notes
- 1 ↩palponum (flatterers/sycophants) is a rare medieval form; gloss is uncertain.
- 2 ↩venditorum olei (sellers of oil) may be idiomatic; rendered literally.
- 3 ↩script um is a scribal splitting of scriptum; normalized and translated as one word.
- 4 ↩sicut scriptum est introduces a scriptural quotation or allusion that is cut off at the section boundary; the source citation is not yet resolved.
- 5 ↩aucupes novitatum rendered 'hunters of novelty' (literally 'bird-catchers of novelties') to capture the metaphor of those who hunt for fresh gossip to flatter their way into favor.
- 6 ↩Vatem (acc. sg. of vates) can mean 'seer' or 'poet'; the context points to a Virgilian echo (Eclogues), so 'poet' is preferred.
Eruditio regum et principum (Education of Kings and Princes) companion
Louis IX kept a daily rule of reading. Keep yours.
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