§ 1. For the unconquered strength of a city, for the powers of a kingdom, nothing is so impregnable as modesty and what Christians call humility. Do you judge it right that those placed on high should be humble? Do you call to self-contempt those whose whole life is worn away by a most laborious and anxious ambition? Christ teaches that it must be done altogether so, and the safety of the commonwealth teaches it too—that safety which is nothing without Christ; but I shall now discuss it politically.
Yet do not recoil from discourse about humility, O prince; I shall add to it majesty, magnanimity, and care for fame and glory, for I shall discuss these things in order.
§ 2. Humility is, from a full knowledge of oneself, a true estimation of one’s own goods and evils, and a contempt for preeminence. It is a great virtue, and plainly one belonging to a heroic spirit, by which those things which appear great but are small are appraised at their own prices. Its destruction and plague is pride: an appetite for dignity and preeminence contrary to right reason. Nothing is more monstrous than that vice, nothing more hateful to God, nothing more pernicious to the commonwealth. Let all, therefore—prince, nobles, citizens, farmers—be trained in modesty and submission. All, I say; for pride can belong to the poor, and humility to princes. The crime is not in the things but in their use. In the magnificence of princes there is often a spirit that despises riches and honors; in the will of the most abject there is a most arrogant vanity.
Let the most holy wife of the proudest king, Esther, be an example. Esther 14:16: “You know my necessity: that I abominate the sign of my pride which is upon my head on the day of my display; and that I detest it as the rag of a menstruous woman and do not wear it on the days of my silence; and that I have not eaten at Haman’s table, nor has the king’s banquet pleased me, nor have I drunk the wine of libations; and your handmaid has never rejoiced from the time when I was brought here until the present day, except in you, O Lord God of Abraham.”
Haman has exhibited for us an example of raging arrogance; he gravely shook both himself and the commonwealth.
The second foundation of the commonwealth, therefore, is humility. The breath of vainglory, striving upward, overthrows it as though by an earthquake. “A proud human being is a great misery,” says Augustine; but a proud commonwealth is a great and manifold misery.
§ 3. First, indeed, humility is pleasing to God, because it distrusts itself and relies upon God. It has God as protector; pride has him as destroyer. Psalm 17:28: “For you will save the humble people, and will humble the eyes of the proud.” Deservedly, therefore, does a proud commonwealth experience God as an enemy, since it does not acknowledge him as the author of its felicity. He “regards the humble things in heaven and on earth.” So truly, as Augustine testifies in Book III, Chapter XXIII of On Christian Doctrine, “There is scarcely a page of the holy books in which it does not resound that God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
Pride brought about the ruin of the whole world, for it was the beginning of sin. Pride dragged Pharaoh into the depth of the Red Sea as though he were a stone. “Who is the Lord, that I should hear his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go.” Sennacherib, in 4 Kings 18 and 19, terrifies Hezekiah with enormous pride; but, after his army is slain, he himself is butchered by his sons in the sight of his idol. “Since, therefore, the power of God is not in multitude, nor his will in the strength of horses, nor have the proud pleased him from the beginning, but the prayer of the humble and meek has always pleased him,” Judith 9:16. A city which raises itself up against majesty cannot stand, for the Lord detests lofty eyes. Proverbs 9:17. All the great men whom power has puffed up have experienced what Solomon threatens in Proverbs 15:25: “The Lord will demolish the house of the proud, and will make firm the boundaries of the widow.”
§ 4. A few sin at the peril of all; indeed, the wantonness of women is sufficient for destruction, as Isaiah 3:16 bears witness. No riches, no confidence exempts the proud. How strong in calamity were the Israelites? Isaiah 9:9: “And all the people of Ephraim shall know, and the inhabitants of Samaria, saying in pride and greatness of heart: ‘The bricks have fallen, but we shall build with hewn stones; they have cut down the sycamores, but we shall put cedars in their place.’ And the Lord will raise up the enemies of Rezin over him and turn his enemies into a tumult—Syria from the East and the Philistines from the West—and they shall devour Israel with the whole mouth.”
How magnificently Assyria boasts in the same prophet, Chapter 10:12: “In the strength of my hand I have done it, and in my wisdom I have understood; and I have removed the boundaries of peoples, plundered their princes, and, like a mighty man, pulled down those seated on high.” What does the prophet, from God’s secret counsel, foretell to so great a monarch? Verse 16: “For this reason the ruler, the Lord of hosts, will send leanness among his fat ones, and beneath his glory a burning shall blaze like the burning of fire.”
Scarcely can a pride greater than Babylon’s be conceived; Isaiah speaks of it in Chapters 13 and 14. Yet it was drawn down to the lower regions. “And that Babylon, glorious among kingdoms, renowned in the pride of the Chaldeans, shall be as when the Lord overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.” The Lord says to her in Isaiah 47:8: “And now hear these things, you delicate woman who dwells confidently, who say in your heart: ‘I am, and there is none besides me any longer; I shall not sit as a widow, and I shall not know barrenness.’ These two things shall suddenly come upon you in one day, barrenness and widowhood; all things have come upon you because of the multitude of your evil deeds and because of the exceedingly great hardness of your enchanters.”
Moab has the same pride, but with less power. Jeremiah 48:29: “We have heard the pride of Moab; he is exceedingly proud—his loftiness, his arrogance, his pride, and the elevation of his heart. I know,” says the Lord, “his boasting, and that his strength is not proportionate to it, nor has he attempted to do according to what he was able. Therefore I shall wail over Moab and cry out to all Moab, lamenting to the men of the earthen wall.”
This vice, therefore, is hateful to God and always precedes the destruction of commonwealths, for it contains an express contempt for the divinity. This argument from divine judgment and oracles is abundant for a pious prince. Writers ignorant of our affairs have likewise taught that the punishment of pride is most grave. Orpheus, Plato, and Libanius, in chastising that vice, coined the proper name Νεμέσεως. We think that the other vices are punished more gently, but that pride is crushed. They called her the maiden Adrastia and Rhamnusia. But let us turn our mind to political reasons.
§ 5. The second evil of pride is that it overturns the commonwealth by hatred of itself. The other vices—imprudence, timidity, drunkenness—admit allies and partnerships. Neither a modest man nor a proud man can endure a proud man. All desire to rise above, all to command, none to be subjected. Since all are borne toward the same point, it is necessary that all collide. “Among the proud there are always quarrels.” Proverbs 13:10. Pride makes princes, and especially nobles, hateful. They called Tarquin—headlong in lust, blind with avarice, mad with fury—“the Proud,” and thought the reproach sufficient. Nor does it render merely the prince, but even the prince’s virtues, hateful.
Pride joined to distinguished conduct pollutes it. Indeed, pride itself withdrew far away— A vice customary in prosperous circumstances, And an unwelcome companion of virtues.
No other cause has afflicted great men more
than pride arising from deeds well done, because it produces envy and hatred; but against the hatreds of many no resources can prevail. Benefits themselves, when given proudly, are thankless; when cast up as reproaches, they are turned into injuries. But if Camillus, if Marius, if the Scipios act arrogantly, they make unwelcome the safety they brought to the fatherland.
Seneca writes in Book II, Chapter XI of On Benefits: “If you wish to have grateful men whom you bind by obligation, you ought not only to give benefits but to love. Above all, as I have said, let us spare their ears: admonition produces weariness; reproach, hatred. Nothing must be avoided equally in giving a benefit as pride. What need is there for arrogance of countenance? What need for swelling words? The thing itself exalts you. Empty boasting must be removed; the deeds will speak while we are silent. A benefit proudly given is not merely unwelcome but hateful.
“Caesar gave life to Pompeius Pennus—if he gives who does not take it away. Then, after Pennus had been acquitted and was giving thanks, Caesar extended his left foot to be kissed. Those who excuse him and deny that this was done for the sake of insolence say that he wished to display his gilded slipper—indeed, his golden one, adorned with pearls. Precisely so: what is insulting here, if a man of consular rank kissed gold and pearls, and if he would otherwise have chosen no part upon Caesar’s body which he could kiss more cleanly? A man born for this purpose, that he might exchange the customs of a free state for Persian servitude, judged it too little if an old senator who had enjoyed the highest honors had lain suppliant before him in the sight of the foremost men in the manner in which conquered enemies have lain before conquerors. He found something below the knees to which he might thrust liberty down. Is this not to trample the commonwealth—and, someone will say (for it can pertain to the matter), with the left foot? For that man, shamefully, madly insolent, who heard petitions concerning the life of a consular man while wearing his slippers, had not been insolent enough unless the emperor had thrust his feet into the senator’s face.”
What, then, inflicted twenty-three wounds upon Caesar? Not only injured majesty, not the slaughter of so many citizens, not the pillaged treasury and seized fasces, but the fact that he did not rise before the senate and that he forced his feet upon a senator’s kiss. And so those through whom he conquered and to whom he had given life rose up against him.
But by contrast behold the dispositions toward Alexander, the Roman emperor. Herodian narrates thus: “When the appointed day arrived, after he had performed the customary sacred rites for his departure, he left Rome, with the senate and the whole people conducting him, looking back repeatedly and weeping. Nor was there anyone among the people who looked upon him departing with dry eyes, since he had the whole multitude desirous of him, having been raised by them and having administered the empire most modestly for so many years.”
The principal cause, therefore, is hatred. For all exult with joy at the punishment of a proud human being. And God himself in a certain manner taunts him.
For τὸ νεμεσητικόν, indignation, is implanted in all human beings; Aristotle in Book II of the Ethics calls it ἐπαινετόν, praiseworthy, and places it in the middle in relation to ἐπιχαιρεκακίαν, malicious joy. For indignation bears it ill that prosperity has been conferred upon an unworthy person; but whoever grows insolent in prosperity appears unworthy of felicity. Whoever vaunts himself from a lofty place is judged worthy to fall from it.
§ 6. The third evil of arrogance is the subtlety of the vice. For in a marvelous manner, while it is avoided, it is sought. And so it insinuates itself into all the virtues and attempts to withdraw their foundation so that the whole structure may fall. Thus humility is also the remedy of all the vices. By this means, however, the commonwealth is overturned under the appearance of the good and honorable. For when the proud perform certain great things and things useful in appearance, because ambition and desire for glory, not reason, draw them, they thereafter turn these things against their friends. Those bodies of the commonwealth are not great but swollen, destined to fall by their own bulk and to burst. Pride is the head of the vices: it presses upon all and commands all. And what is done is called virtue until the whole pus erupts.
§ 7. The commonwealth is sustained and ruled by wisdom. Nothing is more closely joined to wisdom than humility, nothing more opposed to it than ambition, which, among all the passions, has this property: it makes men the most foolish. For it is a certain drunkenness of the arrogant which does not leave them even when sober. For the Spirit of God, the spirit of wisdom, descends into a humble soul—beautiful in its own eyes and in God’s eyes; he despises one that is exalted. “Where pride has been, there shall also be insult; but where humility is, there shall also be wisdom.” Proverbs 11:2. Pride therefore turns kings away from wisdom. And they sin especially in this, that they consider themselves wise. “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”
Not only princes but philosophers, the instructors of princes, have been blinded by pride. For concerning them too this saying was bandied about: τῶν φιλοσόφων οὐδὲν ἀφιλοσοφώτερον—nothing is more foreign to philosophy than the philosophers themselves. Anaxippus spoke more gently: philosophers are indeed wise in words, but in reality are ἀνοήτους, senseless. And so many expelled the philosophers: Lysimachus and Antiochus from the whole kingdom; the Romans expelled Alcius and Philiscus, “Epicurean pigs,” and at one time all sophists, as the Messenians and others also did. And what one would especially marvel at: from Attica herself, Sophocles by his own ψηφίσματι, decree, removed the same men.
Saint Chrysostom explains the cause of their folly on Romans 1:22:
μέγα τι περὶ ἑαυτῶν φαντασθέντες, καὶ οὐκ ἀνασχόμενοι ταύτην ἐλθεῖν, ἣν ὁ Θεὸς ἐκέλευσεν αὐτοῖς, ἐβαπτίσθησαν τοῖς τῆς ἀνοίας λογισμοῖς.
“Having imagined some great thing about themselves and not enduring to enter by that way by which God commanded them to enter, they were immersed in thoughts of madness.”
But that mad wisdom is especially censured by which they were led to infect the world with superstitions. For although they did not believe in the divinities, they bewitched wretched nations with fear of them, and boasted that they were doing this wisely, as though for keeping peoples in their duty. Thus speaks one of their wise men, Cicero, in Book I of On the Nature of the Gods: “Who was ever so blind in contemplating things that he did not see that these human forms were transferred to the gods either by some design of wise men, so that they might more easily turn the minds of the unskilled from depravity of life to the worship of the gods, or by superstition, so that there might be images which, by venerating them, they might believe themselves to approach the gods themselves?”
But in this wisdom their folly most manifestly betrayed itself. For by that way they taught impunity for every crime. Since it was easy for anyone to despise gods of wood and clay, they then fashioned gods made according to their own judgment and steeped in their own vices, so that they might sin more freely by the authority and exhortation of the divinities and, consecrating to them the shameful acts of their own crimes, might judge themselves made holy by impurity itself.
Princes and magistrates outstripped this unwisdom of the philosophers by the most insane and ambitious rashness and folly, as though with white horses. For when they saw that the right of making gods had been given to the commonwealth, they especially bestowed this benefit upon themselves. “Should I doubt that there are gods,” says Gaius, “when I make gods?” By this pride they destroyed themselves and the commonwealth. From this it also followed that they admitted no counsels and that no one dared to put forward truths. But without counsel no city can be ruled.
§ 8. Humility is magnanimous; pride belongs to a small mind and, if we wish to judge rightly, is childish. It is a great thing to be small in one’s own mind. There is no need of arguments for this: children, when praised, are transported by joy
and do not conceal that passion; they even boast of their affairs of their own accord, and in this matter the simplicity of an innocent age delights us. But if adults or old men do the same things, we judge them not indeed children, yet nevertheless childish. Never is greater laughter aroused on the stage than when some Pyrgopolinices trumpets his battles, because an altogether ridiculous thing is seen: so childish a spirit in so vast a body and in such an array of arms.
The ancients very wittily laughed at Menecrates, who required no other payment from those whom he had healed—whose number was enormous—than that they should call him Jupiter. A childish deed: for all, in return for the benefit conferred upon themselves, were compelled to laugh at the wretched man. How mad and childish was the pursuit of Psaphon the African, who trained talking birds bought at a great price to say, “Psaphon is a god.” That most wretched man did not see that the affair could not remain hidden; next, that the birds would fly away even to the pathless places of the forests and would proclaim their master’s commendation among mountains and woods with vain zeal, or, in their new liberty, would shake off the old song.
A child defeated in a sportive contest wails; the victor exults, because a little matter either depresses a small spirit or raises it on high. In the arrogant—that is, in the grand and therefore ridiculous—there is no other childish prudence or magnanimity: all are occupied with little things. If you suddenly catch a young man curling his hair, arranging anklets, or attending to other καλλωπίσματα, adornments, he blushes because he understands that it is contrary to decorum, and because μικρόψυχον τῶν περὶ τὸ μικρὸν ἐπιμέλειαν—the care expended upon small matters—is a sign of a small and degenerate spirit.
§ 9. The greatest praise, therefore, is not to act for the sake of praise. It is the childish error of those who think that love of praise is a virtue. For he sees more soundly, says Augustine in Book V, Chapter XIII of The City of God, who recognizes that love of praise is also a vice. This did not escape the poet Horace, who says:
You swell with love of praise; there are sure expiations Which, if you read the little book purely three times, will be able to restore you.
And in a lyric poem, to repress the lust for ruling, he sang thus:
You shall rule more widely by subduing an avid Spirit than if you join Libya to distant Gades and each Carthaginian serves one man.
Nevertheless, those who do not restrain their more shameful lusts by the faith of piety, by obtaining the Holy Spirit, and by love of intelligible beauty, are at least better when restrained by desire for human praise and glory—although they are not yet holy, they are less shameful. Even Tullius could not dissemble this in the same books which he wrote On the Republic, where he speaks about forming the prince of the city, whom he says must be nourished upon glory, and consequently recalls that his ancestors did many marvelous and glorious things through desire for glory.
§ 10. But how great a danger is approached while that most powerful passion is nourished—which passion does it flee? From this it comes about that all seek the fame of virtue, few seek virtue itself, and sometimes no one does. Although desire for glory sometimes has a good outcome, although it restrains enormous vices, although it is to the profit of the commonwealth, it is nevertheless dangerous and does not cease to be an evil. Otherwise drunkenness, lust, avarice, and envy itself would also have to be praised. For the drunken, through lack of judgment, cast themselves into dangers from which the sober cannot emerge. Lovers, the envious, and the avaricious, agitated by the furies of their vices, have often rendered great services to the commonwealth. The folly of the lowest common people is profitable to many; those vices must not therefore be tolerated. For although pride sometimes subdues other passions, more often it arouses them.
Calamitous was the pride of Sesostris, king of Egypt, who
Drove Pharian chariots with the necks of kings.
Who drove Xerxes into so cruel a war? Who, before him, Cyrus? And after Cyrus, Alexander? What but desire for glory drove others? So that they might be praised by a few, they destroyed entire nations by extermination.
There is a difference, as Saint Augustine admonishes in Book V, Chapter XIX of The City of God, “between desire for human glory and desire for domination. For although it is easy for him who delights too much in human glory also willingly to affect domination, nevertheless those who desire the true praise, albeit of human affairs, take pains not to displease those who judge rightly. For there are many good things in morals concerning which many judge rightly, although many do not possess them; and through those goods of morals they strive toward glory, command, and domination. Concerning them Sallust says, ‘But that man strives by the true way.’ But whoever, without desire for glory, by which a human being fears to displease those who judge rightly, desires to dominate and command, for the most part seeks to obtain what he loves even through the most manifest crimes. Accordingly, he who desires glory either strives by the true way or certainly contends by deceits and fallacies, wishing to appear good when he is not. And therefore, for one who possesses virtues, it is a great virtue to despise glory, because his contempt for it is in the sight of God but is not disclosed to human judgment.”
§ 11. Joined, therefore, to that danger is the fact that they think there is a good in the vice. For he who, from love of praise, has cut down an enemy and borne wounds in front will also, lest he be compelled to yield to citizens, not shudder at a butchery of citizens; indeed, for his own triumph he will force all into dangers. All history teaches that most wars began from desire for glory and the lust for ruling, and that civic contests arose from ambition.
§ 12. I have demonstrated that anger is deadly to a city and at the same time have shown that it generally arises from pride. Those whom praises inflate and make swollen, censure casts down if they cannot avenge themselves, and drives into rage if power to avenge an insult has been granted. Wretched is the lot of a human being who is raised up by the flattery of those who praise him, contracted in spirit and made to totter by the rashness of those who censure him.
Clidemus the Athenian, victor in a sportive contest, while being crowned by his companions, died submerged in the sweetness of glory. I think it a disgrace that he was an actor and the victor in an actor’s contest; but he valued the victory so greatly that through its sweetness he expelled his soul. Chilon the Spartan, while embracing his son who had won at Olympia, breathed out his soul through joy. Tertullian, On the Soul, Chapter LII. So great was the force of joy in Sophocles and the tyrant Dionysius that, upon receiving the token of victory in tragedy, they ceased to live. Pliny, Book VII, Chapter LIII.
Place so great a love of praise in a prince, in a senate. What crimes will not be committed for the sake of obtaining it? Add admonitions, censures, refusals, insults: will not those for whom a foolish little glory was dearer than life judge these annoyances more grievous than death? Hence come those disasters of cities, when a little utterance of another’s malignity casts those greedy for praise down from the state of virtue and impels them to destroy the commonwealth. Golden is Augustine’s sentence: “Just as humility profits those who serve, so pride harms those who rule.” The City of God, Book V, Chapter XV.
§ 13. The virtue of humility is pleasing and beautiful in all; in kings and pontiffs it is divine. For one placed on high not to think high things is difficult; not
to look down upon inferiors from on high is a miracle. To few does that felicity fall, that they should not be destroyed by the appearance and opinion of felicity. Amid so many acts of obedience and blandishments, mortality—of itself inclined toward self-flattery—is rarely sufficiently cautious. A prince has no cause, but many occasions, for pride.
Gaius at the beginning conducted many things modestly, so that the conscript fathers ordered them to be read every year. No training is so firm that desire for command will not tear it away. Alexander had, says Valerius in Book VIII, Chapter XV, “a breast insatiable for praise.” When Anaxarchus, his companion, reported on the authority of his teacher Democritus that there were innumerable worlds, Alexander said: “Alas, wretched me, that I have not yet obtained even one!” The possession of glory which suffices for the dwelling-place of all the gods was narrow for a human being.
But that praise belongs properly to Christian princes; for those examples which are brought forward from pagans do not exhibit constant virtue. Sardanapalus placed upon his tomb an ἀποκρότημα, that is, two fingers making a snapping sound as though by striking one another, by which he might show that all things, even the greatest, were not worth an as, but were a sound flying past. Porus, when defeated, renounced the royal name, but retained pride and ferocity. Nor was it great humility in Croesus that, when placed upon the pyre, he confessed that he could fall from felicity. Nor was Gilimer the Arian more modest, who, when led in triumph, said more than he felt: “Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity.” Catholic princes pronounce this when they approach kingdoms. For it does not belong to great prudence, when you have fallen, to confess that you had not stood with a stable step.
Humility, therefore, belongs properly to Christians, just as the use of the name in that signification belongs properly to them. Augustine on Psalm 31 says: “This water of the confession of sins, this water of humiliation of heart, this water of a salutary life which casts itself down, presumes nothing concerning itself, and proudly attributes nothing to its own power—this water is in none of the books of foreigners: not in the Epicureans, not in the Stoics, not in the Manichees, not in the Platonists. Wherever even the best precepts of morals and discipline are found, nevertheless this humility is not found. The way of this humility flows from no other source; it comes from Christ. This way is from him who, although he was high, came humble. For what else did he teach by humbling himself, having become obedient unto death, even the death of the cross? What else did he teach by paying what he did not owe, so that he might free us from debt? What else did he teach when baptized, who committed no sin; when crucified, who had no guilt? What else did he teach but this humility? Not undeservedly does he say: ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.’”
§ 14. There are indeed very many things in which the modesty, submission, and obedience of Catholics—which is the mother of humility—is shown. For kings and nations obey their pontiffs and sacred councils. Prostrate upon the ground, they confess their sins, undergo the punishment imposed, and submit their conscience to another’s judgment. How arduous this is both the heretics teach, who cast off this part of Christianity, and the magistrates in China, who, because they judge this unworthy of their majesty, come with greater difficulty to the Christian religion.
But the marvelous humility of Christian princes has often appeared. Philip the Arab, who seized the empire by cruelty and parricide, an art then customary, and did not reign without blood, was excluded from the communion of the pious by Fabian; covered with dirt and squalor, he stood as a suppliant to the priest in the order of penitents. He sought entrance into the Church not by strength or gifts but by tears. Eusebius, Book VI, Chapter XXVII.
The great Theodosius—as Theodoret, Book V, Chapter XXVII; Augustine, The City of God, Book V; Sozomen, Book VII, Chapter XXIV; and the letters of Ambrose are authorities—avenged an injury inflicted by the Thessalonians with an unjust slaughter when he ordered certain persons to be killed indiscriminately. Ambrose barred him from entrance to the temple, and the emperor obeyed; falling at the pontiff’s knees, he offered himself for any satisfaction whatsoever. Thereafter, admitted to the society of Christians, without royal adornment and prostrate with his whole body upon the ground, he wept—a true and magnanimous imitator of David.
Nor was the submission of Otto less, who, because Crescentius had been killed by hanging contrary to the faith pledged him, at the command of Abbot Romuald exacted from himself the punishments for the violated covenant. For he traveled barefoot from Rome to Mount Garganus in Apulia, afflicted his body throughout Lent by the roughness of haircloth, and lay upon mats. Thus Peter Damian in the Life of Romuald.
Henry II, king of England, according to the testimony of Neubrigensis, received blows publicly with his shoulders bared. Notable is his declaration: “I do not flee Christian discipline. Decree what you please; I shall devoutly embrace and execute the decree.” He did no otherwise than he said: casting off his royal garment, he stood in the order of public penitents and submitted himself naked to ecclesiastical discipline.
I judged it worthwhile to relate these public examples; there are more private ones among all Christian magnates. For all both accuse themselves of their sins and not only hear the admonitions of their priests but also cheerfully undergo those punishments which the priests impose for the expiation of offenses. This one thing is the most effective remedy against the deceitful and sweet poisons of flatterers—a remedy which is always ready at hand from humility. Otherwise, just as the healthiest bodies most easily drink in the corruption of poison, so the pestilential breath of flattery most swiftly infects the spirits of kings.
Behold for yourself Justinian, more a founder of laws than a cultivator of justice, whom Tribonian, a despiser of every religion, filled with so great a vanity that he hoped he would be immortal, as Suidas reports.
§ 15. The mind of Canute was different; concerning him see Lipsius, Monita Politica, number VIII. There is a notable lesson in modesty from the king of the English. When he was besieged by flatterers—that is, courtly ravens—and they extolled his lot and said that all things served him and were turned at his nod and countenance (these are the words of the Annals), he suppressed the foul flattery thus. While they watched, he placed the royal seat on the seashore in the very approach and flow of the sea. Then he said: “You, sea, are under my dominion, and the land on which I sit is mine. I command you and declare that you must not rise upon my land or drench the limbs or garment of your lord with moisture.” He had spoken; the sea maintained its course, came forward, washed over him, and then withdrew. “Behold,” he said, “how I command all things! Let all who inhabit the earth know that the power of kings is vain and false, and that one alone is worthy of that name who truly possesses command over heaven, earth, and sea.” Nor did this modesty remain within words. In every action he displayed himself such, and thereafter he did not admit the crown upon his head.
There remain very many examples of Christian humility. For many great princes, laying aside the diadem, returned not only to private life but even to one that was poor and despised by the world. Such, says Bozius in Book XI, Chapter IX of On the Signs of the Church, were Emperor Lothair, son of Louis the Pious, in the year 855; Hugh, king of Provence; Ratchis of the Lombards, in 750; Sigismund of Burgundy, in 413; Bamba of Spain; Vermundus of Castile; Rammirus of Aragon; Sigisbert of Northumbria; Sebbi of England; Eltheredus and Chemeredus of Mercia; Alfridus and Afridus of Northumbria; Offa and Iua of England; Ceolulfus and Egbertus of Northumbria; Henry IV of Denmark; Carolomannus
of Alemannia; Trebellius of Bulgaria; and Casimir of Poland, who thereafter, at the command of the Roman pontiff and overcome by the entreaties of his subjects, received the governance of the kingdom again.
Here we omit innumerable princes who daily do this: casting aside the highest honors among mortals, they do not disdain, among humble communities of religious, to subject themselves to the obedience of otherwise obscure superiors, compelled by no terror of enemies nor cast down by stupor and inertia of mind. Among the Greeks this was done by the emperors Anastasius II, Theodosius III, Michael Rangabe, Michael IV, Isaac Comnenus, and Manuel Palaeologus; and among our own by the kings Svatopluk of Moravia and Solomon of Hungary. How great a spirit did they show in resigning their principate, and how far did they differ from the boastful and most frivolous dispositions of pagan kings, who, from eagerness for triumph and for the sake of fruitless leaves, brought the safety of their citizens into peril. Even now, many sons of kings, princes, nobles, and powerful men live in the most laborious and poorest religious orders and in the most abject offices, more humbly than they formerly lived among the pagans in power and honor.
§ 16. Many things can induce all men, and especially leading men, to moderation and submission of spirit. First, indeed, because they are human beings. Philip the Macedonian judged that sufficient for subduing pride. For every morning, before he undertook anything, he ordered a boy to announce: ἄνθρωπος εἶ—“You are a human being.” Would that he had wished to persuade his son Alexander of this; after conquering the Persians, Alexander disowned his father and preferred to be called the son of Jupiter. But the human being is an animal both most wretched and most proud. They rule human beings, but are human beings. When dead, they will be trampled by many. Before their judge, without a bodyguard, without a diadem, they will tremble.
Timoleon, the avenger and preserver of Sicily, when after the expulsion of the tyrants he was held in great honor and even love, adorned such distinguished achievements with modesty and protected them. Probus writes in his life: “Nothing insolent or vainglorious ever issued from his mouth. Indeed, when he heard his praises publicly proclaimed, he never said anything other than that in this matter he especially gave and rendered thanks to the gods: that when they had determined to restore Sicily, they had wished him above all to be the commander.”
§ 17. Next, he ought to beware excessive and ceremonious honors. Those things belong to barbarous and proud nations, concerning whom Tacitus writes in Book XIV: “To one accustomed, of course, to foreign pride there was no knowledge of us, among whom the right of command has force while empty things are passed over.” Both others and, most accurately, Nicolas Trigault describe the arrogance of Chinese magistrates and of the others who live by the examples of princes, and their many empty cares over salutations and duties; they pass almost all their time in empty things. Hence come many errors, enmities, contempts, and contentions, while in ceremonious civility they are more fastidious than is right and judge it an inexpiable offense to have erred in trifles. The Christian commonwealth labors not a little in these matters, while spirits are puffed up by splendid titles, retinues, and precedence in seating, and are easily driven to rivalry and hatreds.
Let it come into the mind of all how glassy and fragile felicity is. He who just now, as Priam, appeared fortunate in barbaric gold and fifty sons soon
Lies a vast trunk upon the shore.
§ 18. Nor are the fates of cities gentler. Human felicity is trusted badly: when it is at its best, it falls. That which befell the old man Democrates befalls them. When, out of breath, he climbed the citadel, he said that he breathed much but had little strength. Frequent, noisy, and laborious breathing is a sign of a departing life; nor should any commonwealth promise itself long duration in which impulses greater than the powers of nature shake the afflicted body.
§ 19. Finally, let those whose authority is greater undertake certain things which in appearance are abject and unworthy of magnates. That action has great force for bringing inferiors back to modesty. Nothing is more effective. The Lord and Savior taught that neither divinity nor humanity subsisting in a divine hypostasis is defiled by humble birth and offices. “So great,” says Augustine in Tractate LV on John, “is the usefulness of human humility that even divine sublimity commended it by its own example, because a proud human being would perish forever unless a humble God found him. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which had perished.”
Before the Lord, the prophet and king David, a type of the Lord, also made a profession of humility. 2 Kings 6:21: “‘As the Lord lives,’ he says, ‘I shall play before the Lord, who chose me rather than your father and rather than all his house, and commanded me that I should be leader over the Lord’s people in Israel. And I shall play, and I shall become more abject than I have become, and shall be humble in my own eyes; and with the maidservants of whom you have spoken, I shall appear more glorious.’ Therefore no son was born to Michal, the daughter of Saul, to the day of her death.”
“Behold,” says Gregory in Book XXVII of the Moralia, “he whom the Lord singularly preferred to all despises himself by submitting himself to the Lord, equating himself with the least, and displaying abject things. He does not call the power of the kingdom back to mind; he does not fear to become cheap in the eyes of his subjects by dancing; he does not recognize himself as preferred in honor to others before the ark of him who had given the honor. Before God he did cheap things, even the lowest, so that by humility he might make firm those brave things which he had done before human beings. I do not know what others think of his deeds; I marvel more at David dancing than fighting. For by fighting he subjected his enemies, but by dancing before the Lord he conquered himself.”
Nothing is more pleasing among the common people than honor shown to the wretched with modesty. Alfonso, king of Aragon and likewise of Sicily and Naples, at that time most powerful, saw a muleteer imploring aid, whose ass laden with flour was stuck in the mud. He dismounted from his horse and, exerting himself with all the strength of his body, pulled out the beast of burden. This deed was so pleasing to the peoples of Campania that many cities joined themselves to him and preferred to admit the government of a modest, civil, and humble prince rather than to claim a proud liberty. Nor is there in truth any danger that majesty will be depressed by true humility: love compensates for all things. Nothing is more pleasing to the common people than that their labors be valued by magnates. If a magnate is insulting toward anyone, he is loved by no one.
§ 20. The last point is that those who are in dignity should have modest, affable, and truly humble ministers. It is an intolerable servitude for brave and noble men when a prince must be approached through the disdain of flatterers; when a minister intercepts or detains the benefit which they have received from the prince; when another must be petitioned after the prince. But this matter must be discussed specifically. For out of one hundred ministers of princes who are greatly in favor, you will scarcely find ten whom either pride or avarice has not shaken out of the court, after they have first made the prince hated.