De praerogativa rationalis creaturae: et quod requies, quam naturaliter appetit, nec in salute corporis, nec in mundi hujus sit quaerenda divitiis.
The Soul's Dignity Above All Creation
The rational creature, though lower than God alone, surpasses the sun, heaven, and all created causes in dignity and hiddenness.
O wonderful creature, lower than your Creator alone — why do you cast yourself down? Do you love the world? But you yourself are higher than the world. Do you marvel at the sun? But you are brighter than the sun. Do you philosophize about the shifting position of this heaven? But you are more exalted than heaven. Do you investigate the hidden causes of creatures?
Love the Creator, Not His Works
Rather than judging or loving creatures, the soul should love the God who placed it above all things and made Himself alone its true blessedness.
But no cause is more hidden than you yourself. You doubt, since you judge yourself on all these things — yet about yourself, nothing of the kind?1 But if you want to judge, nevertheless do not love.2 Don't love even to the point of judging him.3 Love him who placed you before all these things — and did not subordinate you to them. He placed you first — not so that you would be more blessed because of these things, but so that there might be something over which you could be made superior, subjecting all things to you as a heap of honor, while keeping himself for you as the fruit of blessedness.4 Why, then, do you chase after fleeting beauties, when your own beauty neither withers with age, nor grows sordid with poverty, nor pales with sickness, nor is destroyed even by death itself?5 What you seek — why seek it? But don't seek it there.6
Rest Not in Bodily Health or Riches
The rest the soul naturally desires cannot be found in bodily health, which demands anxious toil, nor in riches, which bring only fear and grief.
You want to lack nothing that your will desires, and so to find rest. Why, then, this? Where, you say? Not in the health of the body: if it is loved in such a way that the rest you long for is sought in it, see how much toil is needed to preserve it, and with what punishing destruction a punishing disease is usually driven out.7 Besides, even if health is present, how much care must be taken to maintain it — how many diseases threaten it, how many fevers, how many plagues, how many, in a word, deaths. What then? Surely not in riches? But what toil in acquiring them, what anxiety in keeping them, what fear of losing them, what grief if they are taken away!
The Poor Sleep Soundly; the Rich Cannot Rest
Wealth increases fear of loss, whereas the poor and stripped travel without anxiety, sleeping freely even without locks on their doors.
You've increased your wealth, and you've increased your fear all the same. The powerful man is feared, lest he take it away; the thief is feared, lest he diminish it; the servant is feared, lest he lose it. And then — how often this very thing happens too, as a certain wise man says: 'Riches stored up for the harm of their owner' (Eccles. v), who would deny it? The poor person, then, finds greater rest. For the traveler who is empty-handed and stripped bare — as someone puts it — doesn't fear the robber's ambush. Free from worry about thieves in the night, the poor person sleeps soundly — even if there are no locks to secure the door. And that's the origin of the well-known line of poetry: 'The empty-handed traveler will sing in the presence of the thief.'
The True Sleep of the Soul in God
The sleep that truly rests the soul is not bodily slumber but the interior repose in God, when fleshly senses are lulled and the heart tastes the sweetness of the Lord.
And yet the gnawing anxieties of the wealthy are something a certain wise man, quite elegantly mocking the rich man's fullness, ridicules: "The rich man's abundance won't let him sleep" (ibid.). . Although this often happens at the literal level — that someone wealthy, stuffed to the point of nausea, is jolted awake as he settles into rest with a heavy stomach, disturbed by constant belching — still, the saying should rather be understood of that other sleep, of which the Bride glories in the Song of Songs: "I sleep, and my heart watches" (Song of Sol. 5:2). v). Concerning this sleep the Psalmist also says: "In peace, in the same, I shall sleep and I shall rest" (Ps. 4:9).✦ iv). This is the sleep in which, with the senses of the flesh lulled and worldly cares driven from the innermost chambers of the heart, the holy soul rests in the sweetness of God, tasting and seeing how sweet the Lord is (Ps. 33:9).✦ xxxiii); how blessed is everyone who hopes in him (Ps. xxxiii).
The Greedy Are Cursed; True Rest Is in God Alone
No rich person greedy for profit can share in God's true sleep; Scripture pronounces woe on those who heap up what is not their own.
31). With this sleep, then, let it be far from you to suppose that any rich person is lulled to rest — someone who, always gaping at profits, the more he has amassed, the more insatiable his greed becomes, with no regard for what he desires. Whence Solomon says: The greedy man, he says, will not be satisfied with money, and the one who loves riches will get no fruit from them (Eccles.✦ 5). Such a person also incurs that prophetic curse. Woe to the one who amasses what isn't his own.✦ And immediately the same one, mocking that heap of its metals: Why does he pile up thick mud against himself?✦ (Habakkuk. 2.)
Read the original Latin
O mirabilis creatura, solo Creatore inferior, quae te dejicis? Mundum amas? Sed ipsa es mundo superior. Solem miraris? Sed ipsa es sole lucidior. De coeli hujus volubilis situ philosopharis? Sed tu coelo sublimior. Secretas creaturarum causas rimaris?
Sed te nulla causa secretior. Dubitas, cum tu de his omnibus judices; de te autem nihil horum? Sed si velis judicare, noli tamen amare. Sed nec ipsum judicare ama. Ipsum ama, qui his omnibus te praeposuit, non submisit. Praeposuit, non ut ex his tu beatior, sed ut esset quo tu esses superior, subjiciens tibi omnia ad cumulum honoris, se tibi servans ad fructum beatitudinis. Quid ergo sequeris fugitivas pulchritudines, cum tua ipsius pulchritudo nec senectute marcescat, nec paupertate sordescat, nec palleat aegritudine, nec ipsa saltem morte depereat? Quod quaeris, quare; sed noli ibi.
Quaeris, ut voluntati tuae nihil desit, et sic requiescas. Hoc ergo quare. Ubi, inquis? Noli in salute corporis: quae si sic ametur, ut in ea requies ista quaeratur, cerne, si desit, quanto labore acquiritur, quam poenali exitio poenalis plerumque morbus expellitur. Porro si adsit, quanta necesse est cura servetur, quot ei insidiantur morbi, quot febres, quot pestes, quot denique mortes. Quid ergo? Nunquid in divitiis? Sed quis labor in acquirendis, quae sollicitudo in servandis; quis timor, ne amittantur; quis dolor, si detrahantur?
Auxisti pecuniam, et timorem nihilominus auxisti. Timetur potens, ne auferat; timetur latro, ne minuat; timetur servulus, ne perdat. Deinde quam crebro id quoque eveniat, quod quidam sapiens ait: Divitiae conservatae in malum domini sui (Eccle. v), quis dixerit? Magis ergo requiescit pauper. Vacuus enim viator et nudus, ut quidam ait, non timet latronis insidias. Securus a nocturnis furibus dormit pauper, etsi claustra non muniat. Inde est et illud poeticum: Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator.
Caeterum mordaces divitum curas quidam sapiens satis eleganter irridens: Saturitas, inquit, divitis non sinit eum dormire (ibid.) . Quod licet ad litteram plerumque contingat, ut dives quispiam saturatus ad nauseam, dum praegravato stomacho se colligit ad quietem, crebris ructibus excitetur; intelligendum tamen dictum de illo potius somno, de quo sponsa gloriatur in Canticis: Ego, inquiens, dormio, et cor meum vigilat (Cant. v). De quo et Psalmista: In pace in idipsum dormiam et requiescam (Psal. iv). Hic est somnus, in quo sopitis sensibus carnis ac temporalibus curis a penetralibus sui cordis extrusis, sancta anima in Dei suavitate quiescit, gustans et videns, quam dulcis est Dominus (Psal. xxxiii); quam beatus omnis qui sperat in eo (Psal.
xxxi). Hoc ergo somno absit ut divitem quempiam aestimes consopiri, qui semper lucris inhians, quo plura congesserit, eo inexplebiliori ingluvie non habita concupiscit. Unde Salomon: Avarus, inquit, non satiabitur pecuniis; et qui amat divitias, fructum non capiet ex eis (Eccle. v). Qui propheticum quoque illud maledictum incurrit. Vae qui congregat non sua. Statimque idem metallorum ejus subsannans congeriem: Ut quid aggravat contra se densum lutum? (Habac.
ii.)
Scripture echoes
- ↩Ps.4.9 — In peace I will both lie down and sleep, for you, LORD, alone make me dwell in safety.
- ↩Ps.33.9 — For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.
- ↩Eccl.5.9 — Whoever loves money is never satisfied with money, and whoever loves abundance never has enough profit—this too is vanity.
- ↩Hab.2.6 — Will not all these take up a taunt against him—a mocking riddle, a byword against him? And they will say: "Woe to the one who increases what is not his own—how long?—and loads himself down with pledges."
- ↩Hab.2.6 — Will not all these take up a taunt against him—a mocking riddle, a byword against him? And they will say: "Woe to the one who increases what is not his own—how long?—and loads himself down with pledges."
Notes
- 1 ↩The sentence contrasts the soul's readiness to pass judgment on external matters with its evasion of self-examination. The force of 'nihil horum' is left deliberately open: the reader supplies what is lacking in self-knowledge.
- 2 ↩The concessive 'tamen' with the imperative creates a paradox: judgment is conditionally permitted but love is unconditionally forbidden. The implied object of 'love' is the thing judged — i.e., do not become attached to the worldly things you assess.
- 3 ↩'Ipsum' likely refers back to God or Christ from the surrounding context. The sense: do not let even the act of judging become an object of attachment.
- 4 ↩The double purpose clause (non ut…sed ut) contrasts two reasons for the soul's elevation: not that creation itself would bless the soul, but that creation would serve as a platform of honor from which the soul could rise higher, with God himself reserved as the true end — the 'fruit of blessedness.'
- 5 ↩The fourfold 'nec…nec…nec…nec' catalogue argues from the soul's incorruptible beauty to the irrationality of pursuing perishable things. 'Tua ipsius pulchritudo' refers to the soul's God-given beauty, which transcends bodily decay.
- 6 ↩The compressed syntax is deliberately terse. 'Quod quaeris' = the thing you are looking for; 'quare' = for what reason / why; 'sed noli ibi' = but do not look for it in those places (the fleeting beauties just mentioned). The rest is left for the reader to supply.
- 7 ↩The adjective poenalis is repeated in tandem (poenali exitio ... poenalis ... morbus), intensifying the idea that both the effort to preserve health and the disease itself carry a punitive weight; the repetition is preserved in English as 'punishing destruction / punishing disease'.
Speculum caritatis (The Mirror of Charity) companion
Reorder one love at a time, daily
Use the study map with the free Chosen Portion app's daily readings to work through Aelred at a sustainable pace.
Aelred wrote the Mirror as a rule for daily interior discipline in community, and Chosen Portion carries that discipline forward as a short ordered reading each day.
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