VISIO TERTIA, cap. XV
When Humors Rage: The Body's Collapse
Disordered humors drain the body's moisture, bringing illness, head pain, bone wasting, and wasting sickness tied to the waning moon.
So when the humors in a person are stirred up in a disordered way and at some point touch that person's liver-veins, as was said above, the moisture of the liver is diminished, the moisture in the chest is also drained, and as a result they drive the person, dried out like this, into illness. Phlegm too, in the same person, becomes dry and poisonous, and it rises up to the brain in this way, brings on head pain, makes the eyes ache as well, and the marrow in the bones wastes away, so that at times the person falls into a wasting sickness when the moon is in its wane.
Tyrannical Thoughts Crush the Soul's Virtues
Fierce, tyrannical thoughts crush interior justice and reduce knowledge and right action to wasting sickness and despair as the light of truth fades.
When a person's thoughts take on fierceness, hardness, and a tyrannical spirit, and in this way turn aside toward every kind of vanity, they crush the justice that ought to be flourishing in that person, drenched as it is with the dew of the Holy Spirit in the holiness of good works, and with this tyranny they overpower and weaken and wither all the other virtues in that soul. They also reduce the knowledge of that person — its beginning and purpose, and the strength of right action that was once alive in them — to a kind of wasting sickness and to despair, because the light of truth that once shone for them is now fading.
Deserted Moisture and the Leprosy of Sin
Driven-out moisture hardens the flesh into scaly eruptions, loins lose chastity, sins rot openly, and harmful examples rise like skin eruptions, as Hosea foretold.
The moisture that is in the navel of that person, driven out by those same humors, sometimes turns into dryness and hardens, and so the flesh of that person becomes scaly and ulcerous, as though they were a leper even though they do not have leprosy. What is more, the veins of the loins, touched unjustly by those humors, stir up all the other veins in the same way, so that the proper moisture in the person is dried up, and with the moisture left behind, skin eruptions break out in that person, because the moisture of self-control — which ought, as it were, to destroy desire at the navel of that person — has been driven out by these fierce, hard, and unlawful thoughts, and so is no longer bathed with the dew of the Holy Spirit. And so when that moisture deserts the person, their sins rot through an evil habit, so that they become openly foul to everyone, like leprosy; and their loins are not girded with chastity, but are stirred up by those same thoughts, so that, now that the seed of good fruit has dried up in that person, harmful examples rise up in that soul just as skin eruptions do — as Hosea also shows through the Holy Spirit, saying:
Hosea's Witness to Corruption
The prophet Hosea's words bear on these matters and indicate how they are to be understood.
The words of the prophet Hosea that bear on these matters, and the sense in which they are to be understood.
Read the original Latin
Itaque humores qui in homine sunt, injusto modo commoti, cum venas jecoris illius aliquando tangunt, ut supra dictum est, humiditas illius minuitur, humiditas quoque pectoris attenuatur, unde etiam hominem sic exsiccatum in infirmitatem impellunt. Flegma etiam in eodem homine aridum et venenosum fit, illudque ad cerebrum ejus sic ascendit, caputque in dolorem ducit, oculos quoque dolere facit, medullaque in ossibus illius marcescit, ita ut interdum ille caducum morbum incurrat, cum luna in defectu est. Cum enim cogitationes hominis ferocitatem et duritiam tyrannidemque in se assumunt, ac sic ad quamque vanitatem declinant, justitiam quae rore Spiritus sancti perfusa sanctitate bonorum operum in ipso germinare deberet, hac tyrannide opprimunt, reliquasque virtutes in illo debilitant et arefaciunt. Scientiam quoque illius principium et intentionem, ac fortitudinem justae operationis, quae prius in ipso vigebant, velut in caducum morbum in desperationem ducunt, quoniam lumen veritatis, quod illi lucebat, jam attenuatur. Humiditas etiam quae in umbilico illius est, per eosdem humores fugata, in siccitatem aliquando vertitur et indurescit, unde et caro ipsius ulcerosa et squamosa fit, velut leprosus sit, cum lepram non habeat; venae etiam lumborum ipsius per illos injuste tactae, caeteras eodem modo commovent, ita ut recta humiditas in ipso exsiccetur, sicque humore relicto impetigines in illo exsurgunt, quia humiditas continentiae, quae quasi in umbilico ejus concupiscentiam destruere deberet, per has feroces ac duras illicitasque cogitationes fugata, rore Spiritus sancti in illo non perfunditur. Unde cum illum deserit, peccata ipsius per malam consuetudinem putrescunt, ita ut omnibus velut lepra fetendo manifesta fiant; lumbique illius castitate non praecincti per easdem cogitationes commoventur, ita ut, germine bonorum fructuum in ipso exsiccato, quemadmodum impetigines prava exempla in eo attollantur, sicut etiam Osee per Spiritum sanctum demonstrat, dicens:
Verba Osee prophetae ad haec competentia, et quo sensu accipienda sint.
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