Quae pertineant ad religionem proconmlvm
The Duties of a Just Governor
A governor must protect the innocent, maintain order, and uphold the dignity of his office through personal integrity.
This concerns the governors and ordinary judges, and how far gifts may be accepted; it also touches on Cicero, Bernard, Martin, and Gaufrido Gamotend. It is part of a governor's religious duty to ensure that the powerful don't inflict injuries on the humble, and that their defenders don't harass the innocent with malicious criminal charges. He must also prevent illegal exactions, acts of violence, and sales or contracts extorted through fear—or those made without payment—so he doesn't burden the province by demanding hospitality for himself; ultimately, he must ensure no one suffers unjust profit or loss. It is fitting for a good and serious governor to ensure the province remains peaceful and quiet; he will easily achieve this if he works diligently to hunt down and remove wicked men. He ought to hunt down sacrilegious robbers, thieves, and kidnappers, and punish them according to their crimes, along with those who harbor them—for without such people, a robber cannot hide for long. Anyone who administers justice must be careful to remain accessible, yet he must not allow himself to be held in contempt. This is why it is added to the mandates that governors should not admit provincials into too close a familiarity; for contempt for one's dignity is born from equal conversation. In short, justice must be administered in such a way that he enhances the authority of his office through his own character.
The Dangers of an Unsteady Temperament
A judge must remain emotionally detached, as uncontrolled anger or bias distorts judgment and reflects a lack of self-mastery.
Furthermore, in the process of judging, a leader shouldn't flare up against those he considers wicked, nor should he weep at the pleas of the wretched; for that is not the behavior of a steady and upright judge, whose inner state is betrayed by his facial expressions. For what is more unsightly in a serious man than if his cheeks turn pale at a breath of air, his skin wrinkles in dark patches, his eyes flash, and his face becomes distorted? Or if anger inflames the blood in his face and seems to force it to the surface, while his lips twist and foam, his arms are thrown about, his feet stomp, his body trembles, and his whole demeanor expresses not so much a man who is angry as one who is insane? Certainly, when I see such people, I feel compassion for them and fear for myself, remembering the people I read about in Pliny’s Natural History who are said to exist in Africa. They are said to cast spells with their voice and tongue, so that if they happen to praise beautiful trees, lush crops, healthy children, fine horses, or livestock that are well-fed and well-kept too enthusiastically, those things suddenly wither or die. The fascination of the eyes is also deadly. The same author reports that there are people in Illyria who kill by looking at those they have been angry with for a long time, and that these men and women, who are harmful by their gaze, have two pupils in each eye. Apollonides also claims that in Scythia there are women born called Bithiae, who likewise have two pupils in their eyes and destroy anyone they happen to look at while angry. I fear that hot-tempered judges are related to these people. Physiognomists also claim that people with spotted eyes are more prone to wickedness.
Moderation in Gifts and Service
Magistrates must avoid greed and bribery, adhering to the principle of moderation in accepting only what is necessary for sustenance.
But what has been said about governors and other judges must also apply to proconsuls—whom our people commonly call 'wandering justices'. And the name 'error' certainly fits these people, if not their office, when they follow their own desires in the pursuit of greed and the plundering of the common people, wandering away from the path of fairness. The services of all officials ought to be free of charge, so that nothing beyond what is established is demanded or even accepted. But perhaps you're asking what is established. A plebiscite contains a provision that no governor may accept a gift or present, unless it is food or drink, and that must be consumed within a few days. This also extends to proconsuls and other magistrates by the emperor's mandate. They shouldn't, however, abstain from gifts entirely, but they must exercise moderation. To ensure they neither abstain entirely nor greedily exceed the proper limit for gifts, the divine Severus and the emperor Antoninus provided a very elegant rule in a letter. The words of their letter are these: 'As for gifts, listen to what we think.' There is an old proverb: 'Not everything, not always, not from everyone.' For it is highly inhumane to accept nothing from anyone; but to accept everything, everywhere, is most base; and to accept from everyone, in every way, is most greedy. The mandate—that the proconsul or any other official should not accept or buy anything except for daily sustenance—doesn't actually concern formal gifts, but rather things that go beyond food. However, gifts shouldn't cross the line into bribes. While an advocate may sell a just defense, and a legal expert their sound advice, it's strictly forbidden to sell a judgment.
Examples of Integrity and Corruption
Through the contrasting examples of Cicero's worldly wit and the holy detachment of figures like Pope Eugenius and Bernard of Clairvaux, the author illustrates the true standard of judicial purity.
When Cicero wanted to buy a house on the Palatine and didn't have the money at the time, he secretly accepted a loan of two million sesterces from Sulla, who was a defendant at the time. Before the purchase could be made, the matter leaked out and became public knowledge; he was accused of accepting money from the defendant to buy a house. Stung by this unexpected reproach, Cicero denied having accepted it, claiming he wasn't going to buy a house; he said, "The charge you're making is so false that it would only be true if I actually bought the house." But when he bought it later and his enemies in the Senate threw this lie back at him, he laughed heartily and said, while still laughing, "You are foolish men to ignore that it is the way of a prudent and cautious head of a household to deny he intends to buy what he wants to purchase, so as not to alert his competitors." And so, he brushed off what he couldn't deny with a witty, urbane remark, making the matter more worthy of laughter than condemnation. He had a habit of using a joke to dodge any shameful accusation he couldn't deny. Pope Eugenius—a man of holy memory whose life is worth imitating, and whom you have seen—would not accept any gift at all from a man involved in a lawsuit, or from anyone he thought might be facing one. When a certain prior of modest means, whose case he hadn't yet heard, insistently offered him a mark of gold with great devotion upon his arrival, he said, "You haven't even entered the house yet, and you already want to corrupt the master?" For this holy man believed that anything offered to a judge while a case was pending was a form of corruption. Bernard of Clairvaux, too— He said, 'It’s so false that I’ve accepted money that, as a monk and a deacon of the holy martyrs Cosmas and Damian, and as a cardinal living in Rome, I’ve lived so uniquely in the heights, shaking my hands free from every gift, that the person whose gold or silver I’ve accepted as a gift hasn’t been born yet.' Why should I mention Martin, who, returning poor from his mission contrary to custom, after being pressured with great insistence by the Bishop of Florence to accept a horse necessary for his companion, returned it to the donor as soon as he learned that the reason for the gift had been under consideration in the Roman Church from the very beginning? Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, who knew him more perfectly, reports this more fully in the doctrinal book he wrote to Saint Eugenius on Contemplation, or Consideration. I pass over the fact that the venerable father Geoffrey of Chartres, legate to Aquitaine, did not accept gifts from the provincials except for food and drink, and even this with the utmost frugality; but he despised everything offered as a token of hospitality as if it were dung. The saint of Clairvaux testifies that he refused to accept a fish—commonly called a sturgeon—for free from a devout cleric of his own mission, and didn’t yield to the offerer's persistence until he had paid him the price for the gift he had received.
Read the original Latin
praesidum et ordinariorum iudicum, et quatenus exenia protendi liceat; et de Cicerone, Bernardo, Martino, Gaufrido Gamotend. Pertinet autem ad religionem praesidis prouidere ne potentiores uiri iniuriis afficiant humiliores, ne defensores eorum calumpniosis criminibus insectentur innocentes. -Prohibebitque illatas exactiones et uiolentias factas et extortas metu uenditiones et cautiones uel sine pretii numeratione, ne et ipse prouinciam in praebendis hospitiis oneret, denique ne quis iniquum lucrum uel dampnum sentiat, praecauebit. Congruit enim bono et graui praesidi curare ut pacata et quieta sit prouincia; quod facile optinebit, si sollicite agat ut malis hominibus prouincia a careat eosque conquirat. Nam et sacrilegos latrones fures plagarios conquirere debet et, prout quisque deliquerit, in eum animaduertere receptatoresque eorum, sine quibus latro diutius latere non potest. Omni uero ius reddenti obseruandum est ut in adeundo quidem facilem se praebeat sed contempni non patiatur. Vnde mandatis adicitur ne praesides in ulteriorem familiaritatem prouinciales admittant; nam ex conuersatione aequali contemptio nascitur dignitatis. Et summatim ita ius reddi debet ut auctoritatem dignitatis ingenio suo augeat.
Sed et in cognoscendo nec excandescere aduersus eos quos malos putat, nec precibus calamitosorum illacrimari oportet; id enim non est constantis et recti iudicis, cuius motum animi uultus detegit. Quid enim in uiro graui deformius quam si ad auram genae pallent, cutis in nigas contrahitur, scintilb lant oculi, turbantur uultus; aut si sanguinem faciei ira accendit et quasi excludit in superficie, spumantia torquentur labra, brachia iactantur, saliunt pedes, corpus trepidat et toto gestu non tam iratum exprimit quam insanum. Certe, cum tales uideo, compatior illis michique metuo memor hominum quos in Affirica esse in libro Naturalis Historiae apud Plinium didici. Dicuntur enim effascinare uoce et lingua ut, si impensius forte laudauerint pulchras arbores, segetes ameniores, letiores infantes, equos egregios, pecudes pastu et cultu optimas, repente moriantur aut pereant. Faseinatio quoque oculorum exitialis est. Refert idem esse homines in IUiricis, qui interimant uidendo quos diutius irati uiderint, eosque ipsos mares feminasque qui uisu nocentes sunt, pupillas in singulis oculis habere binas. Apollonides quoque perhibet in fo Sitia nasci feminas quae Bithiae uocantur, et easdem in oculis binas habere pupillas et perimere si quem uisu forte iratae aspexerint. Vereor ne his cognati sint iudices iracundi.
Tradunt etiam phisiognomi eos, qui habent oculos maculosos, ad nequitiam proniores. Quae uero de praesidibus aliisque iudicibus dicta sunt, debent et apud proconsules, quos nostrates uulgariter dicunt iustitias esse errantes, optinere. Et nomen quidem erroris, etsi non officio, personis tamen eorum conuenit, qui euntes post concupiscentias suas in sectatu auaritiae et depraedatione popularium a tramite aequitatis aberrant. Debent autem officia omnium esse gratuita, ut nichil ultra statutum exigatur sed nec recipiatur. Sed forte quid statutum sit quaeris. Plebiscito continetur ne quis praesidum munus donumue caperet, nisi esculentum poculentumue, et id quidem intra dies proximos prodigatur. Quod et ad proconsules aliosque magistratus ex mandato principis transit. Non uero in totum debent exeniis abstinere, sed modum adhibere.
Vt uero nec in totum abstineant nec auare modum exeniorum excedant, diuus Seuerus et imperator Antoninus elegantissime sunt epistola moderati. Cuius epistolae uerba sunt haec: Quantum ad exenia a pertinet, audi quod sentimus. Vetus prouerbium est: Nec omnia, nec semper, nec ab omnibus. Nam ualde inhumanum est a nemine accipere; sed passim, uilissimum; et per omnia, auarissimum. Quod autem mandatis continetur, ne donum uel munus ipse proconsul uel qui in alio officio erit accipiat ematue quid nisi uictus cotidiani causa, quod ad exenia iam non pertinet sed ad ea quae edulium excedant usum. Sed nec exenia producenda sunt ad munerum qualitatem. Licet enim patrocinium iustum possit uendere aduocatus et peritus iuris sanum consilium, iudicium uendere omnino non licet. Cicero, cum in Palatio domum uellet emere et pecuniam in praesens non haberet, a Silla, qui tunc reus erat, mutuo sextertium uicies tacite accepit.
Ea res, priusquam emeretur, prodifca est et in uulgus exiuit; obiectumque est ei quod pecuniam domus emendae causa a reo accepisset. Tunc Cicero inopinata obprobratione permotus accepisse se negauit, dicens se domum non esse empturum; atque: Adeo falsum est, inquit, quod obicitis, ut uerum sit me pecuniam accepisse, si domum emero. Sed, cum postea emisset et hoc mendacium in senatu ei ab inimicis obiceretur, risit satis atque inter ridendum: Imprudentes, inquit, homines estis, cum ignoratis prudentis et cauti patrisfamilias esse, quod emere uelit se empturum esse negare propter competitores emptionis. Sic itaque quod infitiari non poterat, urbano facetoque diluit dicto, rem magis dignam faciens risu quam erimine. Familiare siquidem habebat ut, quotiens obiectum turpe abnegare non posset, responsione ioculari illud eluderet. Amplectendae memoriae et imitandae sanctitatis summus pontifex Eugenius, quem uidisti, nullum omnino munus hominis litigantis recipiebat aut cui litem crederet imminere. Vnde, cum in aduentu suo prior quidam modicae facultatis, cuius causam nondum audierat, ei marcam auri deuotione multa instanter ofierret: Nondum, inquit, domum ingressus es, et iam uis corrumpere dominum? Corruptionem namque uir sanctus credidit quicquid ofierebatur iudici lite pendente.
Bemardus quoque Clareuallensis I Adeo falsum etc. : adeo, inquit, tierutn sit accepisse tne pecuniam monachus et sanctorum Cosmae et Damiani diaconus et cardinalis Romae degens in excelsis singulariter habitauit, excutiens manus suas ab omni munere, ut nondum natus sit cuius aurum uel argentum in munus acceperit. Quid referam Martinum, qui contra morem a legatione pauper rediens, cum ab episcopo Florentino equum socio necessarium magna compulsus instantia accepisset, eundem restituit donatori, ex quo eum ab initio dati muneris causam in Romana ecclesia uentilandam habuisse cognouit? Quod et plenius sanctus Bemardus Clareuallensis abbas, qui eum perfectius nouerat, refert in libro doctrinali quem ad sanctum Eugenium de Contemplatione uel Consideratione scribit. Taceo quod uenerabilis pater Gaufridus Camotensis legatus Aquitaniae prouincialium munera non recepit, nisi in causa esculenti et poculenti et hoc cum summa frugalitate; sed omnia, quae in exenionim ratione a oiBerebantur, ut stercora contempnebat. Testatur sanctus Clareuallensis quod piscem, quem uulgo sturionem dicunt, a deuoto quodam legationis suae clerico gratis accipere noluit nec ante adquieuit offerentis improbitati quam ei pro admisso exenio pretium numeraret.
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