Those most of all, surely, who imitate his wicked deeds — as [are] the avaricious, thieves, [and] the sacrilegious; and as many as, by some crime and wickedness of their own, disturb a community and some assembly. Hence St. Ambrose (bk. 2 On Duties, ch. 26): “For the rest,” he says, “so have the manners of men brooded over the admiration of riches, that no one is deemed worthy of honor unless [he be] rich. Nor [is] this a recent usage, but — what is worse — this vice has now long since grown inveterate in human minds.
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For when Jericho, a great city, had fallen at the sound of the priestly trumpets, and Jesus [Joshua] son of Nun was gaining the victory, he learned [that] the strength of the people was weakened by avarice and the desire of gold. For when, from the spoils of the burned city, Achan had taken up a golden garment, and two hundred silver didrachmas, and a golden tongue [wedge], [being] brought before the Lord he could not deny [it], but betrayed the theft. Old, therefore, and ancient is avarice, which began with the very oracles of the divine law. Nay, for the sake of repressing it, the law of God was given. On account of avarice, Balak thought Balaam could be tempted by rewards, to curse the people of the fathers — and avarice would have conquered, had not the Lord forbidden him [to proceed], [bidding him] abstain from the curse. And on account of avarice, Achan, [being] cast down, had led the whole people of the fathers into destruction. And so Jesus [Joshua] son of Nun, who could make the sun stand still lest it advance, could not make the avarice of men stand still lest it creep on. At his voice the sun stood: avarice did not stand. And so, with the sun standing [still], Jesus completed the triumph; but with avarice advancing, he almost lost the victory.” In Prudentius (in the Psychomachia), when Avarice was recounting [her] palms and triumphs, [she] at last begins:
“Jericho too saw, amid its own funerals, how much / our hand could [do], when the victor Achan fell, / notable for slaughters, and proud of the ruin of walls, / [yet] succumbed, captured by the gold from the conquered enemies: / while, gathering the marked anathema from the forbidden ashes, / insatiable, he drains the mournful spoils of the ruins. / Him neither a noble tribe, nor [that] of the ancestral people, / [nor his] parent Judah aided — [Judah] noble by [being] one day near to Christ, / and a Patriarch happy in such a grandson. / [But] to whom the example of [their] race is pleasing, let the form / of [their] end please [them] too: let the punishment be the same for those whose crime is one.”
Concerning thieves, the Apostolic Constitutions (bk. 27, ch. 3): “‘Thou shalt not steal.’ For Achar, on account of theft, was slain by stoning.” But concerning the sacrilegious, the Council of Aachen under Pepin (bk. 2, ch. 1), when it had related [the passage] of Joshua forbidding the Jericho anathema, [says]: “Observe, diligent reader, and curious hearer, [that] two [things] are commanded in these words which have been set forth [before]. The one, namely, by which it is prescribed [that] one must altogether beware, lest anything of those [things] which are consecrated to the Lord be touched; the other, by which it is commanded [that] whatever of gold or silver, and iron, and all bronze vessels there be, be consecrated to the Lord and stored in his treasuries. And thou must beware, lest — by even thinking of those [things] which are consecrated to the Lord — thou [be] thus guilty of transgression, and others on thy account be under sin, and be disturbed; and attend sagaciously, in what manner the treasuries of the Lord, at his command, are increased; but observe this too diligently, lest by thy craft, or cupidity, those [things] which are consecrated in the Lord’s treasuries be carried off. But that [the things] which, at the Lord’s command, Joshua had prescribed to be done, were afterward fulfilled — the following [verses] attest. And they burned the city, and all [the things] which were in it, except the silver and gold, and the bronze and iron vessels, which they consecrated into the treasury of the Lord. But [as for one] who — enticed by a certain rash daring — thinks he can, openly or secretly, filch from those [things] which are consecrated to the Lord: let him be deterred by the example of Achan, who, inflamed by the heat of avarice, secretly filched for himself, from those [things] which were to be consecrated to the Lord — namely a scarlet garment, very good, and two hundred silver shekels, and a golden bar of fifty shekels — and, lest he be caught, hid [it] in his tent, the earth being dug up, his children and domestics being conscious [accomplices] — [things] which surely were consecrated to the Lord. On account of whose monstrous crime, a certain part of the Israelite people was slain before their enemies; and Joshua, consulting the Lord, heard these [things]: ‘Arise, why liest thou prostrate on the earth? Israel has sinned and transgressed my pact, and they have taken of the anathema, and have stolen, and lied, and hidden [it] among their vessels: nor will Israel be able to stand before their enemies, and will flee them, because it is polluted with the anathema. I will not be any more with you, until you crush him who is guilty of this crime.’ Note that the illicit deed of one, the whole Israelite people is related to have done: and that, on account of the crime of one, upon the people of God a great menace of the Lord is made — namely, that we could neither have God with us, nor stand before our enemies, until he perished who was contaminated with a crime of this kind. But how Achan himself, by Joshua — Israel being marshaled to him by its tribes — [was] most skillfully examined, and detected, and [how] he confessed his guilt; how too he fell by a hail of stones, and all [the things] which were his were consumed by fire — the following [verses] disclose. Nevertheless these [things] are greatly to be feared, and to be guarded against by all marked with the faith of Christ, lest, on account of the illicit — nay, sacrilegious — deed of others, they neither have the Lord with them (which God forbid), nor prevail to stand before their enemies. But the perpetrators of so monstrous, nay sacrilegious, a deed, it much behooves to beware, lest, on account of their cupidity — which they either exercise or desire to exercise toward things sacred to God — they acquire for themselves, after the manner of Achan, eternal death, and God’s offense against others, and a miserable ruin before their enemies. But to the number of the sacrilegious, Rupert (in [his book] on Joshua, ch. 21) reckons Christians of various kinds, and especially Simoniac Clerics, who abuse the goods dedicated to the worship of God: “It was to be [going to happen],” he says, “(which today we see) that, namely, the Church of God should be not a little disturbed by the avarice, and at the same time the ambition, of false brethren. For what? Are not all [of us] who have been baptized in Christ Jesus [those who] anathematized Jericho — that is, this world — by renouncing the devil and all his pomps? But behold, there have gone out from us very many imitators of Achar, of the tribe of Judah — [those], namely, who, professing the Catholic faith (which is to be, or be called, of the tribe of Judah — for ‘Judah’ is interpreted ‘confession’) — took of that anathema, and stole, and lied, and hid [it], and stored [it] away within their vessels. For while, under the appearance of piety, [being] fair kindlers [of incense] and religious, they are zealous for avarice — which is the service of idols — and make all things venal by a spiritual malice, what [do they do] but steal the anathema, and lie, and hide [it] among [their] vessels, nay among their [own] consciences? This root of malice, and the bitterness of this gall, first in Simon the Great [Magus], through the mouth of Blessed Peter the Apostle, the universal Church of Christ terribly anathematizes, and shows [it] to be a heretical hydra. ‘Not, therefore,’ says the Lord, ‘will Israel be able to stand before their enemies, and will flee them, because it is polluted with the anathema.’ For where, in priests, or in those who preside, avarice reigns, and money obtains the principate, these who are Israel — holding the arms of the virtues against the vices, and willing, as is fitting, to argue, beseech, [and] rebuke — cannot stand against the enemies freely resisting, since [these enemies], whom money protects, [are such] that they are not even sometimes reproved for their vices with impunity. Whence also, in the Evangelist Matthew, we hold a saying said by a beautiful mystery: that when our Lord, having made a scourge of cords, had cast the sellers and buyers out of the temple, then at last the blind and lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. He did not cure the blind and lame before he had cast those robbers out of the den, because, namely, vices cannot be cured, nor virtues illustrated, unless first Mammon be cast out of the hearts of the priests — or the priests themselves, with that god of theirs, be cast out of the temple of God. This, I say, was to be, and therefore was usefully to be foreshown
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in that one Achar — what kind, or how great, according to his name (which is interpreted “tumult” or “disturber”), a disturbance or punishment is laid up for all his imitators. Rightly, therefore, [and] severely, and without any pardon, was it avenged upon him for such a theft — all Israel stoning him, and all [the things] which were his were consumed by fire.” Not dissimilar [things] may be read in Peter Damian (bk. 5, Epistle 78, which is the ninth [letter] to the Clergy of Fano).