§ 1. I have now led forth the chorus of the virtues; the whole company descends into the orchestra of the commonwealth, to be imbibed by minds, not by eyes. If those precepts of the virtues seem to you either long or too numerous, love the commonwealth, love the citizens: you have now fulfilled them all. There is no surer art of ruling than to love one’s subjects. If, therefore, there is no leisure to unfold all the pages of Scripture, hold fast to charity, and in it you will find all knowledge. Augustine, Sermon 39 On Time: “For the fullness of the law is charity.” It is the supreme mystery of faith and the treasure of the Christian faith. It is the highest worship of God; it contains all things; it is the principal good of man and the token of the Christian, the foundation of peace, the bond of unity, without which not even the virtues themselves are pleasing; more excellent than all the gifts of God, at once the pillar and summit of holiness, the death of crimes, the life of virtues. If it is present, no great art is needed. Whoever has loved the commonwealth and its citizens as sacred things is sufficiently versed in politics. Charity is ingenious in devising benefits; by its own nature it is suited to governing men.
At first nations lived without laws and without a judge; they entrusted themselves to the charity of one man, not to his power. There were not so many precautions of ruling; rather, children were as though in the power of parents: under the leadership of charity men commanded and obeyed. From this, flattery devised a form of address of the highest honor, so that it might call princes fathers of the fatherland. For they judged a name of love greater than a name of majesty.
Society cannot remain safe except by love and the preservation of its parts. Seneca, Book 2 On Anger, chapter 31: if the members disagree, if the neighboring member snatches away the nourishment of another and, after the other has been crushed, grows beyond due measure, a monster is born from a beautiful body. The safety of his fellow citizens ought to be as dear to each man as his own. Wherever a battle line is discordant, it is open to the enemy. A commonwealth is very like a triumphal arch suspended in a lofty vaulting: that mass cannot be bound together by iron or mortar; its parts sustain one another by mutual agreement. Stone holds stone; the prince rises above them like the crown of the vault and is supported by them all; unless all are joined to him, they fall. Love, therefore, and love alone, holds together and strengthens a polity. Gifts cannot do this; blandishments cannot do it. If you have enticed any men by gifts, when hope has ceased, love will be dissolved; if someone’s greed has wrung out harsh words, the fruit of blandishments will end in anger. Let mutual love remain as the cement of a great building, and let that which the pagan said remain: “May God love you just as you love us.” Pliny, in the Panegyric. Let the prince certainly persuade himself that all his subjects are making this prayer. Let him live and reign in such a way that, with a tranquil and secure mind, he can utter that prayer in the sight of God. Girt with weapons and an executioner, he can terrify; he cannot compel men to love.
§ 2. The effect of charity is to fear for one’s subjects, not to fear one’s subjects; and happy is the commonwealth in which, without ceremony and with the mind as witness, the citizens pray for life for their magistrate—not because they fear a worse one, but because they desire no better one. This truly follows upon charity, because it commands all the virtues, disposes the services of all, indeed animates the virtues themselves. It is the expeller of all vices and the reconciler of the virtues. “Charity is patient,” 1 Corinthians 13:4; “it is kind. Charity does not envy, does not act perversely, is not puffed up, is not ambitious, does not seek the things that are its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice over iniquity, but rejoices together with the truth; it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Behold: what is scattered among many virtues, charity alone has gathered into a narrow compass, embracing within itself the worth of them all and the majesty of the virtues. Saint Gregory explained these things in Book 10 of the Moralia, chapter 6: “Love of one’s neighbor is derived from two precepts, since it is said both through a certain righteous man: ‘See that you do not do to another what you hate to have done to you by another’; and Truth says through himself: ‘The things that you wish men to do to you, do you also to them.’ By these two commandments, namely, of each Testament, malice is restrained by one and kindness is bestowed by the other, so that each man, by not doing the evil that he does not wish to suffer, may cease from the work of harming; and again, by bestowing the good which he desires to have done to himself, may exercise himself out of kindness for the benefit of his neighbor. But assuredly, while these two are considered with solicitous attention, the heart is stretched toward innumerable services of the virtues, lest either the restless mind burn with desires to inflict the things which it ought not, or, relaxed by idleness, become sluggish in rendering the things which it ought.
“For when it guards against doing to another what it is in no way willing itself to endure from another, it looks around itself with solicitous attention: lest pride raise it up and exalt the mind by casting it down even to contempt of its neighbor; lest ambition tear thought apart and, while expanding it toward seeking the possessions of others, constrict it; lest lust pollute the heart and corrupt it, subjected to desires, through unlawful things; lest anger exasperate it and inflame it even to the utterance of insult; lest envy gnaw it and, emulous of the good fortunes of others, consume it with its own flame. Again, when it considers that it should do to another those things which it expects to be done to itself by another, it assuredly weighs how good things may answer evil things, and better things answer good things; how it may show the meekness of long-suffering toward the insolent; how it may bestow the grace of kindness upon those languishing under the plague of malice; how it may unite the discordant by peace and gird the concordant for the desire of true peace; how it may distribute necessities to the needy; how it may show the way of rectitude to those who err; how it may soothe the afflicted by word and compassion; how it may restrain by rebuke those inflamed with desires for this world; how it may mitigate the threats of the powerful by reasoned argument; how, by whatever aid it has strength to supply, it may lighten the distresses of the oppressed; how it may oppose patience to those who resist without; how it may show discipline together with patience to those who grow proud within; how, toward the faults of subjects, meekness may so temper zeal that it does not enervate it from the pursuit of justice; how zeal may so burn for punishment that, nevertheless, in burning it does not cross the boundary of piety; how it may provoke the ungrateful to love by benefits; how it may preserve all who are grateful in love by services; how, when it cannot correct the evils of neighbors, it may be silent; how, concerning those things which can be corrected by speaking, it may fear that silence is consent; how it may so endure the things about which it is silent that it nevertheless does not conceal the poison of grief in the mind; how it may so extend hands of kindness to the malevolent that it nevertheless does not depart from the law of rectitude through favor; how it may bestow upon its neighbors all that it has strength to bestow, but, in bestowing these things, not be puffed up; how it may so fear the precipice of swelling pride in the good things which it shows that it nevertheless does not become sluggish in the exercise of good; how it may so distribute what it possesses that it attends to how great the liberality of the one who rewards is, lest, when it gives earthly things, it fear its own poverty more than is necessary and, in the offering of a gift, sadness obscure the light of cheerfulness.”
§ 3. Charity does not merely govern the actions of the other virtues; it especially sharpens and strengthens fortitude. Charity for fatherland and citizens brought it about that Gideon, with three hundred men, attacked innumerable forces of enemies, preferable to Leonidas not only in faith and piety but also in the good fortune of victory. Judges 7. Thus Samson alone fought against the Philistines, Judges 15. Thus Jonathan, with his armor-bearer alone, routed the camp of the enemy. David struck down Goliath. “For who is he,” he says, “who is this uncircumcised Philistine, who has dared to curse the army of the living God?”
Why should I recount Mattathias and Judas and his brothers? 1 Maccabees 2. “Woe is me,” says Mattathias, “that I was born to see the destruction of my people. To what purpose, then, do we still live?” And he rent his garments, and so forth. Indeed, this was the opinion of all nations: that one ought to die for the fatherland. Nor are distinguished memorials of the Horatii, the Mucii, the Decii, and the Torquati lacking, although they are not without the errors of those times, which God despised.
The Spartans had cast the envoys of the Persians into wells, contrary to the law of nations, so that they might receive at the same time the earth and water which they demanded as the two signs of acknowledgment of royal servitude. When a pestilence afterward arose, the soothsayers reported that Talthybius, Agamemnon’s herald, who was worshiped as a god at Sparta, had been offended, and that the shades of the Persians had to be appeased by the blood of citizens. They therefore proclaimed that, if anyone wished to die for the fatherland, he should report this to the ephors. Sperthias and Bulis at once presented themselves; having gone to Xerxes, they offered themselves as victims for the fatherland. But he, with great spirit, granted both pardon to the city and life to them, and even tried to retain them with him by immense promises. They answered him: “What thing, O king, do you judge to be of such value among us that it does not separate us from our fatherland, since, led by charity for it, we undertook so long a journey in order to die? And so may it be permitted to us through you to enjoy its sweetness, for which we have determined to expend our life.” Great was their love of fatherland, firm not by impulse but by judgment, although an erring judgment; induced by it, they traversed a journey so great as others would scarcely undertake for the sake of life.
More bravely, Attilius returned for reverence for his oath; for charity toward his fatherland he took severe counsel against his own life. The mother of Cleomenes, the Spartan king, also acted with a manly spirit—if only perjury had been absent. When she saw that she, as a hostage, was obstructing a salutary peace, she informed her son that he should not omit an honorable thing beneficial to the fatherland on account of the body of an old woman. Nor did that mother love the fatherland less who killed her cowardly son: antiquity judged her ἀστοργίαν, her want of natural affection, worthy not merely of no punishment but even of praise, and commemorated the deed in verse:
Τὸν παραβάντα νόμους Δαμάτριον ἔκτανε μήτηρ,
Ἁ Λακεδαιμονία, οὐ Λακεδαιμόνιον.
His mother killed Demetrius for transgressing the laws—a Spartan woman, not a Spartan man.
Another struck down with a roof-tile a son who was returning and reporting the fate of his fellow soldiers. Eristhenes, after he had fought badly, was killed by starvation by his mother. Ovid, in the Ibis:
And, bound at the threshold of a dwelling, may you suffer hunger, as he to whom his own parent gave the law of punishment.
Those things were barbarous; yet they loved their barbarous fatherland so much that they judged it right for it to be preserved by acts of parricide. Nevertheless, they judged this rightly:
Οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐπαναγκαιότερον πατρίδος.
Nothing is more closely bound than the fatherland. Cicero, Book 1 of On Duties: the fatherland is the common parent of all, the most ancient and most sacred, which alone has embraced all the affections of all men. And in Book 1 of On Ends: the fatherland is dearer to us than we ourselves. It seemed to Plato, in Book 15 of On Laws, that the fatherland is mistress and goddess and must be consoled more than one’s mother herself. And in the Crito: “Are you so wise,” he says, “that you do not know that far greater honor must be paid to the fatherland than to parents, and that reverence for it ought to be more sacred, both among the heavenly ones and among mortals who are participants in any understanding at all; and that it must be obeyed and complied with, though harsh and morose, and whatever it commands must be done promptly and quietly, even if it commands that we be beaten, that we be bound with chains, that we be involved in war, and that we suffer wounds and death itself? Resistance must in no way be made, nor must the ranks be deserted: thus justice requires.”
For this reason Codrus, Lucius Tubero, and innumerable others cast away their lives. Others restored the fatherland with great spirit. When, at the battle of Cannae, the Roman state had been brought to the utmost extremity and noble young men, under the leadership of Metellus, were deliberating about deserting Italy, Scipio, by fear of death, compelled them to swear according to his words that they would never desert the fatherland. Deservedly, indeed: for charity casts fear outside,
as Saint Ambrose says on Psalm 118: “In general, indeed, charity excludes fear: thus the soldier who loves the emperor does not fear wars undertaken for the emperor; thus the servant who loves his lord, although he is sent through uncertain and precipitous places, nevertheless despises all dangers through love of his lord, and, if anyone attacks his lord, he does not hesitate to offer himself; thus he who desires to see his children situated across the sea does not fear shipwrecks, enters the waves of the sea through charity for his children, and undergoes the uncertainties of a voyage, but his desires for his children lighten the fear of danger. How beautifully this is also said concerning the martyrs, who truly serve as soldiers for Christ, who, not fearing persecutions, claws, swords, and fires, offered themselves to hostile kings.”
Nor does that city fear an enemy—and, what very rarely is possible, not even a citizen—where charity guides the reins and makes the enactments of the laws salutary by equity and clemency. One bears the burdens of another and is not weighed down by the burdens.
Charity must also be shown to enemies, and especially in the same commonwealth, in which no one is an enemy to another except through private rivalry.
The love of citizens for one another and toward the prince is preserved best by equality of laws, by a sharing of calamities when they must be undergone, by fellowship in honors, by modesty, and by gentle manners. Finally—and this is the chief point—if the prince wishes to be loved, let him love, and let him so love that the commonwealth feels that it is loved. For charity is reciprocal and returns the exchange to one who loves. Moschus says well:
Στέργετε τοὺς φιλεῦντας, ἵν᾽ ἢν φιλεῖτε, φιληθῆτε.
Love those who love you, so that, when you love, you may be loved.
If the people feel that they are loved by the prince, the senate, and the nobility, there is nothing so arduous that they will not do it for their sake; if the prince understands the fatherland’s love toward him, he will strive with every force of his resources to benefit those who love him. And above all, he will not place trust in flatterers, informers, and swindlers, the bloodsuckers of the people. Rather, he will treat them as a father treats his children, and they in turn will obey him as children obey a parent, and they will not listen to seditious tribunes. For a father does not readily offer an ear to calumnies against his children, nor can accusers of a parent be heard by children without crime. Hence also the minds of subjects are joined more closely to one another, as though under one father. Their dissensions in the city are what wounds and convulsions are in the body; unless these are healed, they not only deform all beauty but also take away health and life.
§ 4. Nor will it be difficult for a Christian prince to love his subjects if he considers that they are loved by God, redeemed by the price of most sacred blood, and destined to be endowed with the heavenly city. If he also considers this: whatever benefit he has given to one of the least, Christ regards as received by himself; it is entered into the heavenly accounts. How many thousands can a prince benefit, and in each one merit favor from God? Charity has been commanded to all, but princes have immense material for it: great resources, supreme authority, and myriads who need their aid and protection.
§ 5. Charity for the fatherland must indeed be commended to all; but frequently private advantages are sought under that color and pretext. The Constancy of Lipsius exposes that disguise of many men—or the theatrical performance of a great part of them—in Book 1, chapters 8, 9, and 10. Nevertheless, the safety of the fatherland, that is, that condition of the commonwealth, ought to be the concern of every single person, and it is sweet to die for the fatherland. In one body the several members care for the whole, for the safety of each is derived from the whole. Exiles teach how great that obligation truly is. Euripides, in the Phoenician Women:
Τί τὸ στέρεσθαι πατρίδος; Ἦ κακὸν μέγα;
Μέγιστον· ἔργῳ δ᾽ ἐστὶ μεῖζον ἢ λόγῳ.
“Is it a great evil to be deprived of one’s fatherland?” “It is the greatest; in fact it is greater than in speech.”
Yet almost more men pass their lives outside their fatherland than within it; many things draw many men away from their fatherland either perpetually or at fixed intervals of time. Nevertheless, affection toward the fatherland remains, and certainly ought to remain, even in those far away. These are the words of Sinon, that is, of the little fox:
I am bound by no laws of the fatherland.
But he truly loves the fatherland who labors without advantage to himself, when in the common calamity his own threshold is not touched; who judges every region of the world to be a fatherland to the brave man, but judges that to be the fatherland to which we are all called, that is, heaven. Every land is exile; nevertheless, the laws of exile must be observed, so that the return to the fatherland may be easier. But enough of these things. The prince must be admonished of this again and again: that he should not wish his fatherland to grow with injury to others. That is not charity, but madness. It enjoys a moderate good more quietly; many deaths are expended upon great empires. Let this rather be done: that the inhabitants of every city may migrate to the true fatherland. If it alone surpasses the affection of a parent, let love be expended in seeking the highest good and felicity.
I end this chapter with Augustine’s letter to Bishop Nectarius, who was seeking intercession for his fatherland, that is, the colony of Calama, in which idolaters had killed some Christians and despoiled many. He answers thus in Letter 202: “That, with your limbs now growing cold in old age, your spirit glows with charity for your fatherland, I not only do not wonder at but praise; and I receive not unwillingly—indeed, even gladly—the fact that you not only retain in memory but also demonstrate by life and conduct that, for good men, there is no measure or end to consulting the welfare of their fatherland. Hence we would wish to have you yourself as such a citizen also of a certain fatherland above, in whose sacred love, according to our measure, we undergo danger and labor among those whom we counsel to obtain it: so that you would judge that there is no measure or end to consulting the welfare of that little portion of it which sojourns on this earth; becoming so much the better as you would first render the duties owed to a better commonwealth; destined to find no end to rejoicing in its eternal peace, since you would set for yourself no end to consulting its welfare amid its labors for a time.”
And a little afterward: “However near your age is to its end, you desire to leave your fatherland safe and flourishing. Let all those vain and insane things now be taken away; let men be converted to the true worship of God and to chaste and pious conduct. Then you will see your fatherland flourishing, not in the opinion of fools but in the truth of the wise, when this fatherland of your carnal generation shall have become a portion of that fatherland for which we are born not in body but in faith, where all the saints and faithful of God, after the wintry labors, as it were, of this life, shall flourish in unending eternity. It is therefore our concern neither to lose Christian gentleness nor to leave in that city an example of imitation pernicious to others. How we may do this, God will be present to aid, if he is not so gravely indignant with them. Otherwise, both the gentleness which we desire to preserve and the discipline which we strive to employ with moderation can be hindered, if something else pleases God in his hidden counsel—whether, in judging, he wills so great an evil to be punished with a severer scourge; or, being even more vehemently angry, he wills it to be unpunished for a time, if they are not corrected and converted to him.”
Therefore, just as provision is made for children and grandchildren so that the license by which they may perish is denied them, so also provision must be made for the fatherland, that it may flourish by virtue, piety, and justice; that it may not oppress other fatherlands by an unjust war or by fraud and separate itself from the true fatherland. For safety is imperiled as much by doing injury as by receiving it.