§ 1. Human beings need the greatest care and nurture because they are the tenderest animals, and the greatest restraint because they are impetuous and light. Let us therefore treat their education from their very birth and beginnings.
First, it is in the interest of those who are born that there be prudence in their parents’ entering marriage. It is advisable that epileptics, lepers, and those suffering from cancer or another disease abstain from marriage, lest by contagion they transmit a dreadful inheritance to posterity. For a city could be filled with such families. For if the horror and danger of those diseases is so great that, although the marriage bond remains altogether indissoluble, cohabitation and the use of marriage are nevertheless removed, who could doubt that those marriages are contracted imprudently whose separation is prudently established on account of the danger of contagion? Those are private injuries, but they overflow into the state. Our most learned and diligent Thomas Sanchez, book 9 On Matrimony, disputation 24, numbers 15, 16, 17, and 18, teaches that the obligation consisting in cohabitation and the use of marriage ceases if one spouse labors under a horrible and contagious disease. The third opinion, to which I wholly adhere, teaches that the healthy spouse is by no means bound to render the debt when, in the judgment of physicians, a notable danger of infection threatens. Nor does the text in chapter 2, On Leprous Spouses, stand in the way; for it is understood of a case in which that rendering does not result in notable injury to the one rendering. And thus St. Thomas and the other Doctors cited at number 15 for the first opinion are understood, as is clear from the reason by which they prove it: namely, that from so brief a union no danger of infection threatens. Therefore they plainly judge that, when such danger threatens, the obligation of rendering ceases. Nor does the reason for the second opinion, brought forward at the preceding number, stand in the way. For no one by contracting marriage obligates himself to render except with the safety of the individual preserved, as we proved at number 2. And the reasons adduced there plainly prove this opinion.
Among theologians it is defended by Durandus, book 4, distinction 32, question 1, number 8, where he argues against Major’s first argument to the third conclusion; Paludanus, question 1, article 2, number 7; Almain, sole question; Soto, sole question, article 1, reply 2; Ouandus, sole question after proposition 2; Celaia, question 1, argument 2; Palacios, disputation 1, solution 704; D. Antonius, part 3, title 1, chapter 20, §10 to the end, in the fourth case; Cajetan, Summa, word matrimonium, final chapter, concerning sins in the use of marriage, verse “The first is”; Victoria, Summa on Matrimony, number 275; Medina, chapter On Restitution, question 19, final section; Petrus de Soto, lecture 16 On Matrimony, § “There are also besides these”; Ledesma, part 2, question 4, question 66, article 1, folio 524, column 3; Angles, Flowers, part 1 On Matrimony, question 6, On the Obligation of Rendering the Debt, article 1, difficulty 1; Pedraza, Summa, precept 6, §18; Enriquez, book 11 On Matrimony, chapter 15, number 7; Manuel, volume 1 of the Summa, second edition, chapter 243, number 2; Bartholomaeus a Ledesma, doubt 71 On Matrimony, conclusion 1; Petrus de Ledesma, On Matrimony, question 64, article 1, doubt 2, conclusion 1; Ludovicus Lopez, part 1 of the Instruction, chapter 83, § “But concerning a leprous husband,” and part 2 On Matrimony, chapter 56, immediately at the beginning; Graffis, part 1 of the Decisions, book 2, chapter 83, number 6; Cannedo, Summa of the Sacraments, On Matrimony, chapter 8, number 72; Emmanuel Sa, Summa, word conjugal debt, verse “excuses from rendering”; Vega, volume 1 of the Summa, chapter 78, case 3; and, among jurists, Rosella, word leper, number 2, where Angelus, number 2; Sylvester, word debt, question 1, verse “the second is,” and word leprosy, question 3; Tabiena, word matrimony, question 3, §6, §7 at the end; Armilla, word debt, number 3, word leprosy, number 3, and word matrimony, number 69; Turrecremata, chapter Sciatis, cause 33, question 4, article 1, number 2, case 3; Navarrus, Summa, chapter 16, Spanish number 24, Latin number 25; Gregorius Lopez, law 7, word suadendo, title 2, part 4; Gaetanus, repetition on chapter Ad limina 30, question 1, §4, number 175.
It must nevertheless be observed that if infection is feared from frequent intercourse, but not from one or another act, the spouse is bound to render once or twice, but not frequently. For the entire reason for the cessation of the precept of rendering is fear of infection, and therefore it will cease only to the extent that such fear exists. Thus Palacios, book 4, distinction 32, disputation 1, solution 705.
Exactly the same must be said if one spouse suffers from the French disease; for the healthy spouse is not bound to discharge the debt at the danger of notable infection to himself, because the reason is the same as with leprosy. Thus Victoria, On Matrimony, number 275; Soto, book 4, distinction 32, sole question, article 1, reply 2, verse “indeed”; where Celaia, question 1, argument 2; Palacios, disputation 1, folio 705, verse “But it still torments”; Enriquez, book 11 On Matrimony, chapter 35, number 7; Petrus de Ledesma, On Matrimony, question 64, article 1, doubt 2. Indeed, the same must be said of any contagious disease, for the same reason. Medina, chapter On Restitution, question 19, final section; Ledesma, part 2, question 4, question 66, article 1, folio 524, column 3; Bartholomaeus a Ledesma, doubt 72 On Matrimony, conclusion 1; Armilla, word debt, number 3, and word matrimony, number 96.
Since among the Hebrews, Persians, and other states lepers are separated from the city, it is not fitting for them to establish a new state and produce so miserable a posterity, which will also draw the sound part into its condition.
Other things must no less be avoided. Namely, when a fever attacks either spouse, let them sleep apart by mutual consent, for the offspring will be born sickly and βραχύβιος, short-lived, and even stupid if the fever is more ardent. Next, abundance and crudity of food, and especially drunkenness in the begetters, is the cause of various diseases in those born, renders them dull, and makes them altogether unfit for learning. Far more so does the intemperance of overheated lust. For it renders the body ἀραιότερον, ψυχρότερον, ξηρότερον, καὶ ἀσθενέστερον, rarer, colder, drier, and weaker, as Paulus Aegineta teaches in book 1, with the others agreeing. Rareness, coldness, dryness, weakness, premature old age, and untimely death follow from it. A citizen born from this turns out weak in body and slow in mind; and, what is the greatest evil for a weak and stupid boy, while still immature he carries his parent to the grave, becoming either captive to the negligence of guardians or prey to their rapacity. Let these remarks concerning the begetting of offspring suffice; let us treat of their upbringing.
§ 2. Therefore, when a human being has been born into the light—a sacred and divine thing, an image of his creator—let not only the mother, released from the pains of childbirth, but the whole household give thanks to God with its whole mind. For children are the pledges of marriage and rewards of pains, but a new care for those bringing them up. Let them offer the infant
to God, so that, as he was formed in the womb, he may be re-formed in the laver. And what is chief, let the mother herself be nurse and bearer; let the infant be nourished in the bosom of her from whose entrails he issued. No nourishment is healthier for the newborn than maternal milk. It is the work of nature to provide nourishment for the newborn, Aristotle, book 1 of the Politics, chapter 10. Varro wished nurses and mothers to be the same persons. Every prudent person marvels and is indignant that a mother’s love should vanish so suddenly: how does she so quickly forget the child borne in the womb with so much labor and brought into the light with so much pain?
Πρόβατον οὐκ ἀπολείπει τὸ αὐτῆς ἔκγονον, οὐδὲ λύκος· ἄνθρωπος δὲ ἀπολείπει.
Neither sheep nor wolf abandons its own offspring, but the human being abandons his. Arrian, book 1, Epistle 23. Women who dry up the spring of milk owed to their sons gravely offend God; for nature does not wish its gifts to be intercepted, and does not wish what God has already prepared for the preservation of the human race to be corrupted by luxuries. For by idleness and ἀστοργίᾳ, lack of natural affection, they alter nature, and they act so as to withdraw nourishment from the offspring even through pains, applying cupping glasses to the back which perhaps ought not to be tried even for increasing milk. From this arise χονδριώσεις of the breasts, or θρομβώσεις of the milk, when through the spongy tissue of the breasts the nourishment denied to the child thickens into clots and lumps. Deservedly it torments the mother with punishment; or when, through great abundance, milk distends the κόλπους, that is, the hollows of the breasts, they fall into various diseases.
Thus among all animals there is affection toward offspring: lions and tigers, their ferocity pacified, caress their young and offer their teats. It is the voice of nature that the offspring must be nourished and fought for. The love of offspring sharpens the ferocity of all beasts when they nourish their young. They fear neither wounds nor blows on behalf of their offspring:
Τόσον ἀρτιγόνοιο γενέθλης φίλτρον ἐνὶ καρδίῃ στάζει θεός.
God instilled so great a love of recent offspring into the heart.
Sweet pledges are dearer than one’s own breath. For powerful nature binds parents and children with a firm bond. But foolish mothers entrust a great part of that bond to nurses, and bring it about that grown children love nurses equally with parents, and sometimes more ardently, remembering that their tender age was despised by their mother and taken up by nurses standing in for mothers. Alexander the Great’s love and reverence for his nurse was certainly remarkable, and I do not know whether it was not greater than for his mother Olympias. Curtius, book 8; Justin, book 12.
§ 3. Hence by divine vengeance another punishment is imposed upon delicate women: after they have entrusted their little children, as though strangers and unworthy of their care, to another’s fidelity, they find them disobedient and insolent when they have become stronger. She who did not deem her son worthy of her breasts cannot reproach him for ingratitude by showing them. What remains, therefore, except that she await abandonment in old age by the child whom, while he wailed, she cast from her house, or certainly from her bosom? She will not find in the robust man the constancy of devotion and love whose elements she herself effaced and abolished in the cradle.
§ 4. She also harms her son in many ways. Since he lived in the maternal womb from his mother’s blood, no nourishment is more accommodated to his nature and constitution than that same mother’s milk, for milk is whitened blood. Moreover, a change of nourishment and air is dangerous to so great a tenderness of the offspring. For the sucking of another’s milk conduces neither to health nor growth. Each thing is nourished by what is similar, injured by what is contrary, and cast down by change.
§ 5. Nurses harm the morals of the offspring no less than their life. What if you have obtained a nurse who is drunken, irascible, or lustful? The tender pupil will drink the poisons of a wicked woman in the very milk. And he will hear:
No goddess was your parent, nor Dardanus founder of your race, Faithless one; but the Caucasus, bristling with hard rocks, Begot you, and Hyrcanian tigers put their udders to you.
And: “You were born from rocks, nourished with the milk of beasts.” How can you persuade yourself that an adopted mother will be better for your son, when you have given him two stepmothers? For by deserting him you made yourself a stepmother, and made her one by summoning her. But what sort of woman is she? If she is an old woman, you have sinned against the most ancient precept of medicine. Physicians hold that milk is the foam of blood, for which reason Varro warns that a nurse ought to be young, since in old women, as the blood is worse, so is the milk. Why, therefore, will you offer your son, as true nourishment, a purulent humor scarcely thickened from cold blood? If you provide a young woman, take care lest she corrupt morals and the household. Indeed, take care lest she fail to abstain from intercourse; for if she becomes pregnant, she will give a slow poison to the pupil. Pliny, book 28, chapter 9, says it is deadly for nurses to conceive; and Galen, On the Preservation of Health. Nothing is more harmful to an infant still nursing than for his nurse to conceive in her womb. For what is best and most vital is consumed by that fetus; blood of smaller quantity and less purity remains, and there is either no milk or little, as Aristotle warns, On the Generation of Animals, book 4, chapter 8. But even if we concede that none of the things which frequently happen has occurred, nevertheless a mother’s love is natural and a nursemaid’s mercenary; and so they are led by one payment to one place, by another elsewhere. For when the mind has once given itself to profit, it thinks duty lies where the greatest payment lies. Nor should you think that a nurse will love another’s child when you, his mother, do not love your own.
§ 6. What, finally, would the infant say, if he could speak, when he saw himself banished immediately from the womb and exiled without any fault of his own—unless it was a fault to have been born? He is silent in sound, but cries out in affection; he is tender; he is pitiable because he cannot ask; he must be loved because he does not yet understand his calamity. If he understood, he would surely say: “Mother, you preserve your finery, jewels, and bracelets under many locks; perhaps you foster a puppy and monkey in your bosom; you entrust authority over your strongbox to no one; the whole day is spent arranging your adornment. But me, a part of you, who received my life from your entrails and have scarcely been torn from you, you commit to another’s fidelity and perhaps perfidy. And although you can hope that I shall be brought up with gentle obedience, you certainly know that I shall not be handled by a mother’s hand. If, when you were someday an infirm old woman in need of aid, I were to exclude you from my house or my affection, I would surely be worthy that the deepest earth open beneath me. If I allowed another to appear kinder toward you than I, would you recognize me as your son? To whom do you delegate care of me? Whom do you command me to love as a second mother?”
§ 7. That mother, though a rich and illustrious matron, will not do such things. She will always sustain her son with natural milk, not purchased milk. For maternal milk and spirit always increase the disposition and the growth of the body far more. Columella, book 7, chapter 12. It is not food alone, but spirit also; for with great affection a mother offers her breasts to her son and therefore, together with warm and spirited milk,
infuses a salutary abundance with a certain life of the spirits. All the nourishment of a loving mother is more vigorous and brings to the children not only strength of body but also likeness of disposition.
§ 8. Finally, no one can fail to see what danger is incurred by that most perverse fastidiousness of women and contempt for their own blood. How easy would it be for a nursemaid to be corrupted by the price of a huge payment, so that she substitutes a peasant child for a noble offspring and inserts servile filth into the most distinguished families? This indeed happened to Artabanus the Macedonian, whose unfaithful nurse exchanged his son, and afterward, when both he and the substituted son were adults, disclosed her theft more criminally than she had committed it. For the two met with great slaughter of the kingdom and perished on one day. Cautious custody must be applied not only to little children but much more to adults, for with the age and strength of sons the solicitude of a good parent—never too great—increases. Nurses have great authority over their pupils, often greater than mothers, and there have not been lacking those who loved them more than their mothers. Certainly many have laid impious hands upon their mothers, few upon their nurses. Hence many children of princes have been led into fraud by them, and no royal woman has been carried off without a nurse’s knowledge. Mothers are the cause, because they join to their children another woman as though another mother—one who possesses a mother’s authority and has stolen a mother’s love, but nevertheless possesses a servile disposition for sale at a price. In former times the wickedness of nurses was restrained by many laws, among which that law of Constantine issued in the year 320 is severe: “And since the vigilance of parents is often mocked by the tales and depraved persuasions of nurses, let punishment first threaten those whose detestable service we have shown, and whose purchased discourses have been detected. Let the passages of the mouth and throat that put forth wicked incitements be closed by the pouring-in of molten lead.” Let them therefore follow the precepts of the ancients and nourish their sons with their own milk, so that maternal affection may promote a freeborn disposition. For if, as Justin relates in book 43, Hogis, king of the Curetes, was of extraordinary swiftness because, after he was exposed, he had a doe as nurse, how great a force shall we say there is in other cases? Let them therefore rather imitate the diligence of Cato’s wife, who not only nourished with her own milk the son born from her, but also at times put the infants of her serving-women to her breasts. By this means she attached to her son his household slaves, through their parents, both for the present and the future.
What, therefore, must a prince establish in this matter? I shall say it in one word: a public law must be enacted, that a mother nourish with her own milk the sons whom she has borne, and that neither wealth nor nobility exempt any woman. But if on account of illness she cannot, let the magistrate and husband determine the matter after hearing physicians. Let her who acts otherwise be branded with disgrace.
§ 9. Deservedly so. For unless there is strong love between parents and children, there will be none among strangers and therefore no concord in the state. Many parents have wished for a vicarious death in place of their sons; some have undergone it; more have been unwilling to survive them. Israel mourns Joseph inconsolably. David, moved only by danger, puts aside the signs of grief, but fixes and buries grief more deeply. And let us understand that love not only as devotion but as nature and humanity. Aegeus, king of the Athenians, when from the sight of mourning sails he supposed Theseus slain, cast himself headlong into the sea. A similar error extinguished the mother of Ulysses. Jocasta followed shortly after Eteocles and Polynices had fallen by mutual wounds. Mopsus the Cretan, hearing at Saguntum that his sons had perished, fell from a tower and knowingly and deliberately dashed himself to pieces. Orodes, king of the Parthians, conceived such grief in his mind at the death of his son Pacorus that, as had once happened to Hecuba for the same cause, it turned into madness. Grief for his murdered son also overwhelmed and extinguished Emperor Gordian. When Octavius Balbus thought that his son was being killed on his account, he offered himself to the executioners of those proscribing him. The same love was contested between Quintus Cicero and his son: by no tortures could the son be brought to betray his father; the father gave himself from his hiding place into their sight, that he might deliver his son from slaughter. Theirs was the same love as that of those concerning whom Livy says: “Many falsely believed to have perished in the Second Punic War at Trasimene and Cannae, and whose lives had already been rashly mourned by some, were suddenly presented to their mothers; and they poured so great a mass of joy upon their mothers’ minds that, crushed as though by a sudden ruin, the mothers expired amid kisses and embraces.” Since the bond of natural love between parents and children is so great, its connection ought not to be dissolved or loosened immediately from the first birth by the luxuries of mothers.