Octavum capitulum, de executione justitiae in cohercendis malis quae faciunt cives maxime in clericos et personas miserabiles.

The Prince's Duty to Uphold Justice

The prince must direct his attention and authority toward executing justice, especially in curbing crimes committed in cities where the Church and clergy are oppressed.

Let the prince keep his eye on what serves justice — on rooting out the evils and crimes committed in cities and fortified towns, where, as has been said, the Church is trampled underfoot, her privileges go unrespected, and the clergy are oppressed.¹

The Injustice of Unequal Punishment

While the killing of even the most despised layman triggers full legal consequences, the murder of a cleric goes unpunished, and impunity emboldens offenders to repeat their crimes.

For if any one of the Jews, or even the most worthless layman, is killed, the laws are set in motion, revenues are confiscated, estates are seized, and a capital sentence follows. But if a cleric is killed, no due justice or vengeance follows. And since impunity breeds daring, those who ought to be made more upright by the lash of punishment do not fear to repeat the same sins a second time or commit them a third time—sins by which affliction ought to have opened their understanding, as it says elsewhere:

The Folly of Repeating Sin After Chastisement

Through vivid similes of the wounded gladiator and the shipwrecked sailor, the text illustrates how punishment should deter repetition of sin, yet the undisciplined return to their offenses.

A wounded gladiator stays out of the fight, and yet that same man, forgetting his old wound, picks up his arms again. Who, after a shipwreck, was afraid even of pools and lakes — and yet tries the open sea again with an oar.²

The Double Standard in Judging Clerical Sin

While a humble person receives mercy for sin, a fallen cleric faces public vilification and violence; the satirical maxim confirms that the higher one's rank, the more severely one's vice is judged—a standard citizens apply to clergy but never to themselves.

A lowly and humble person, if he sins, is shown mercy. But if someone from among the clergy, struck down by some lightness or frailty, falls into fault, the tongues of the whole city are sharpened against him to spread his infamy — and would that tongues alone would make his infamy known as a warning, and that hands would not rise up against his person!³⁴ That well-known satirical line is true: every vice of the mind carries with it a charge all the more visible in proportion to how highly the one who sins is regarded. Or, as someone has put it: the more worthy you are—whether by birth or by rank—the more serious are the corruptions found in you. Citizens want this rule applied to clerics—but least of all to themselves—since they pursue the sin of the poorest cleric or scholar more aggressively than the crime of a prelate or someone of greater standing.

Biblical Witness Against Those Who Harm the Church

Princes are charged with allowing modern counterparts of Malchus, Phassur, and Balthasar to rage against Christ and the Church, while no prophetic figures—no John, Phinehas, Elijah, or Mattathias—arise to defend the clergy and the poor.

Assuredly, it is charged against the princes that today Malchus stretches out his sacrilegious hands against Christ, Phassur against Jeremiah, and Balthasar against the vessels of the Lord.^✦^✦⁵ I will speak more openly: clerics are being destroyed, churches are being stripped bare, the property of the poor is confiscated, the justice of God is put up for sale, the clergy are tormented, profit is extorted from the clergy by violence, and evils are committed in many forms — all because the unchaste find no John to stop them, nor do the fornicators find a Phinehas, nor the blasphemers an Elijah, nor the idolaters a Mattathias.^✦^✦^✦⁶⁷

The Prince's Zeal and the Remedy of Authority

Princes must be zealous for the house of the Lord, exercising tempered discipline to humble the proud and embrace the humble, drawing the sword of authority so that fear of justice may turn the people from sin; corrupters of morals and faith must not be defended, for they wound the Church as a mother, and only princely power can bring remedy.

Since it is fitting, then, for rulers to have this zeal for the house of the Lord and to exercise discipline in the church in such a way that, with their discernment tempered, they may humble the proud and embrace the humble, fervor must be kindled in them, indignation stirred up, and the sword of authority drawn—so that if not by the love of divine mercy, then at least by the fear of human justice, the people may turn away from their sins.⁸⁹ Nor should those who corrupt morals or subvert the faith—who rage illicitly, I mean, to the ruin of their mother and the irreverence of their father, Christ and the church—either be defended or have their cause sustained.¹⁰¹¹ Armed against the father, they wound the mother with a cruel blow, and setting her up as a sad spectacle to their own people and a shameful mockery to outsiders, they expose her like a target for strangers' arrows to strike.¹² And in this distress, only the hand of rulers can bring and confer a remedy.

Read the original Latin

Convertatur oculus principis ut manum apponat quae justitiae serviat in malis et criminibus amovendis quae fiunt in civitatibus et castellis, ubi, sicut dictum est, ecclesia conculcatur, privilegiis non defertur, clerus artatur.

Si enim aliquis Judaeorum, vel aliquis occidatur etiam vilissimus laicorum, armantur leges, confiscantur redditus, diripiuntur praedia, sequitur capitalis sententia. Si vero clericus aliquis occidatur, nulla sequitur justitia debita vel viudicta. Et quoniam impunitas parit ausum, qui deberent ex flagello animadversionis correctiores fieri, non verentur idem secundare vel tertiare peccata, quibus aperuisse vexatio debuerat intellectum, sicut alibi legitur :

Saucius évitât pugnam gladiator, et idem Immemor antiqui vulneris arma capit. Qui post naufragium modo stagna lacusque timebat Aequoreas iterum rémige tentât aquas.

Vili personae et humili si peccaverit, parcitur. Si vero quis de numero clericorum aliqua levitate vel fragilitate percussus deliquerit, totius civitatis linguae in ejus infamiam acuuntur, et utinam linguae solum publicarent infamiam ad cautelam, dum manus non insurgèrent in personam !

Novi verum illud satiricum : Omne animi vitium tanto conspectius in se crimen habet quanto qui peccat major habetur ; vel, sicut quidam ait : Quanto dignior es aut per genus, aut per honores, in te tanto res vitiosae sunt graviores. Hanc regulam cives custodiri volunt in clericis, minime in seipsis, cum peccatum pauperrimi clerici vel scolaris gravius persequantur quam crimen praepositi vel majoris.

Certe principibus imputatur quod hodie Malcus in Christum, Phassur in Jheremiam, Balthasar in vasa Domini manus extendit sacrilegas. Dicam apertius quod clerici perimuntur, quod ecclesiae spoliantur, quod res pauperum publicantur, quod justitia Dei venalis proponitur, quod clerus torquetur, quod a clero quaestus per violentiam extorquentur, quod mala multifariam perpetrantur, eo quod incestuosi non inveniunt Johannem, nec fornicarii Phineem nec Helyam, nec blasphémantes Paulum, nec ydolatrae Mathathiam.

Quoniam ergo zeltim domus Domini principes sic habere convenit, et disciplinant sic in ecclesia custodire ut eorum discretio temperata superbos humiliet et humiles amplectatur, accendi debet fervor in eis, moveri indignatio, educi gladius potestatis, ut si non amore divinae clementiae, saltem timoré humanae justitiae cesset populus a peccatis. Nec morum corruptores aut fidei subversores qui in suae matris jacturam et sui patris irreverentiam debachantur illicite, dico autem Christi et ecclesiae, debent vel in patrocinio suscipere, vel in negotio sustinere. In patrem armati crudeli vulnere matrem confodiunt, et eam statuentes triste spectaculum suis, turpe ludibrium alienis, quasi signum ad sagittam alienis carpendam exponunt. Et in hac aegritudine sola potest manus principum afferre remedium et conferre.

Scripture echoes

↩John.18.10 — Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. Now the name of the servant was Malchus.
↩Jer.20.1-Jer.20.6 — Now Pashhur son of Immer, the priest — who was chief officer in the house of the LORD — heard Jeremiah prophesying these words. Jer.20.2 — Then Pashhur struck Jeremiah the prophet and put him in the stocks that were at the Upper Benjamin Gate, which was at the house of the LORD. Jer.20.3 — And it came to pass the next day that Pashhur brought Jeremiah out of the stocks, and Jeremiah said to him, "The LORD has not called your name Pashhur, but rather Terror on Every Side." Jer.20.4 — For thus says the LORD: Behold, I am making you a terror to yourself and to all your lovers. They shall fall by the sword of their enemies, and your eyes shall see it. And I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall carry them captive to Babylon and strike them down with the sword. Jer.20.5 — And I will give all the wealth of this city, all its toil, all its precious things, and all the treasures of the kings of Judah into the hand of their enemies; and they will plunder them, take them, and bring them to Babylon." This tightens the list while preserving the repeated scope of 'all.' Jer.20.6 — And you, Pashhur, and all who dwell in your house shall go into captivity; and to Babylon you shall come, and there you shall die, and there you shall be buried — you and all your friends to whom you have prophesied falsely.
↩Matt.14.3-Matt.14.4;Mark.6.17-Mark.6.18 — For Herod had seized John, bound him, and put him in prison because of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife. Matt.14.4 — For John had been saying to him, 'It is not lawful for you to have her.' Mark.6.17 — For Herod himself had sent and seized John, and bound him in prison because of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, because he had married her. Mark.6.18 — For John had been saying to Herod, "It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife."
↩Num.25.7-Num.25.8 — When Phinehas son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest saw it, he rose from among the congregation and took a spear in his hand. Num.25.8 — And he went after the man of Israel into the inner room, and pierced both of them — the man of Israel and the woman — through her belly. And the plague was stopped from the people of Israel.
↩1Tim.1.13 — though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I received mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief.

Notes

1 ↩artatur: lemma and precise sense uncertain; rendered as 'oppressed' based on context of clerical suffering.
2 ↩Rémige is morphologically uncertain (possibly ablative of means, 'with oar'). The sense is that the shipwreck survivor, who feared even calm inland waters, now ventures back onto the open ocean.
3 ↩vero rendered as adversative 'but' to contrast with the preceding clause about the lowly person being spared; vero could also function emphatically ('indeed'), but the adversative reading better captures the shift in subject.
4 ↩levitate rendered 'lightness' (frivolous conduct) rather than 'fickleness' to preserve the moral tone; fragilitate rendered 'frailty' in the sense of human weakness.
5 ↩Malchus (John 18:10), Phassur (Jeremiah 20:1–6), and Balthasar (Daniel 5) are biblical figures who committed acts of violence or sacrilege against God and His servants. The author uses them as types of contemporary abuses by the powerful.
6 ↩John likely refers to John the Baptist, who confronted Herod's incestuous marriage (Matthew 14:3–4). Phinehas is the zealot who stayed Israel's plague by executing an act of judgment (Numbers 25:7–8). Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal and the sins of Israel (1 Kings 18). Paul (here named as a persecutor-turned-apostle) confronted blasphemers. Mattathias (1 Maccabees 2:23–26) killed an idolater offering pagan sacrifice. The author laments the absence of such zealous reformers in his own day.
7 ↩justitia Dei venalis proponitur rendered as 'the justice of God is put up for sale' preserves the force of venalis (venal/for sale) applied to divine justice — a sharp polemical charge that ecclesiastical justice is being bought and sold.
8 ↩The word 'zeltim' is uncertain in the manuscript; it may be a corruption of 'zelum' (zeal). The translation renders it as 'zeal' based on the context of princely duty toward the house of the Lord.
9 ↩'divinae clementiae' and 'humanae justitiae' form a deliberate contrast between divine mercy and human justice, a key theme in the chapter's argument about the proper exercise of authority.
10 ↩'suae matris' and 'sui patris' are allegorically understood as referring to Christ and the church (spiritual mother and father), not literal parents. The passage condemns those who bring ruin and irreverence to the faith community.
11 ↩'debachantur' is a rare deponent verb meaning 'rage' or 'rant'; the sense here is of uncontrolled, licentious outcry against sacred things.
12 ↩The passage continues the metaphor of spiritual parenthood: the 'father' and 'mother' represent Christ and the church. The violent imagery underscores the gravity of those who harm the faith community and make it a spectacle of shame.

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