THE COMPLAINT OF BOOKS AGAINST THE RELIGIOUS MENDICANTS

OOR in spirit but most rich in faith, the off-scouring of the world and yet the salt of the earth, despisers of this world and fishers of men, how blessed are ye, if suffering need for Christ ye have learned to possess your souls in patience! For it is not want, the scourge of vice, nor the misfortune of your parents, nor any desperate need that hath oppressed you with poverty, but it is your devout will and your Christ-like choice, by which ye have judged that to be the best life which the Omnipotent God, made man, proclaimed the best both by word and by example. Truly ye are the new offspring of the ever-fruitful Church, divinely substituted anew in the place of the fathers and the prophets, that your sound may go forth into all lands, and, trained in our wholesome teachings, ye may proclaim before Gentiles and kings the invincible faith of Christ. Moreover, that the faith of the Fathers is chiefly enclosed in books, our second chapter has sufficiently asserted, in which it is made clear as light that ye ought to be zealous lovers of books beyond other Christians. We are commanded to sow beside all waters, inasmuch as the Most High is not a respecter of persons, nor does the Most Compassionate wish the death of sinners, since He desired to die for them. But He longeth to heal the contrite in heart, to lift up those that are fallen, and by the spirit of gentleness to correct those that have strayed. For this most salutary end the nursing Mother Church has planted you of her grace, and when ye were planted she watered you with her favours, and when ye were watered she strengthened you with privileges, that ye might be coadjutors with pastors and curates for securing the salvation of the faithful. Hence also their own constitutions declare that the order of Preachers was principally established for the study of Holy Scripture and the salvation of their neighbours. Thus they may know, not only from the rule of their reverend founder Augustine, which orders books to be sought on each several day, but instantly upon reading the prologue of the aforesaid constitutions, may perceive from the very title of the book that they are bound to the love of books.

But alas! not only these but others who follow their fashion have been withdrawn from the paternal care and study of books by a threefold superfluous solicitude, to wit, regard for the belly, for clothing, and for houses. Neglecting the Providence of the Saviour, who the Psalmist assures us is solicitous for the poor and needy, they are concerned with the needs of this perishable body, that their feasts may be splendid, their vestments gorgeous beyond the rule of the order, and that the fabrics of their dwellings may be like the battlements of castles, of a height so great as to suit but ill with even the most exalted poverty. On account of these three things we books, who have advanced them to their perfect estate and have granted them seats of honour among the mighty and the notable, are far removed from the affections of their hearts and are reckoned as certain superfluities, save that they stickle for some quartos of little value, from which they bring forth their Spanish dirges and apocryphal ravings, not for the cheering refreshment of souls, but rather for tickling the ears of their hearers. Holy Scripture is not set forth but wholly set aside, as though it were a well worn tale and commonly known to all. Yet scarcely any have touched even its hem, for so great is its depth that, as Saint Augustine asserts, it cannot be comprehended through any effort of study by the human understanding, howsoever much it may be awakened. Out of it he who will study assiduously may unfold a thousand lessons of moral instruction, if only He who has created the spirit of piety will deign to open the door. These lessons will flower with ever-freshening novelty, and with a most savoury sweetness will refresh the minds of those that hear.

Wherefore, the first professors of evangelical poverty, after paying salute in some manner to the secular sciences, gathered together all their strength of mind and gave themselves to labour on the Scriptures, meditating day and night in the law of the Lord. Whatever they could steal from a starving stomach or snatch from a half-clad body they thought great profit to devote to amending or copying books. Their worldly contemporaries, beholding both their occupation and their study, gave to them for the edifying of the whole Church the books which they had collected at great charges in divers parts of the world. Indeed, in these days, when your diligence is wholly set on gain, it is to be believed with reasonable presumption, if our speech may use the figure anthropospathos, that God is unmindful of you whom He sees mistrusting His own promise and setting your hope in human foresight. Ye consider not the raven nor the lilies whom the Most High feeds and clothes. Ye ponder not upon Daniel and Habakkuk, the bearer of the bowl of pottage, nor do ye regard Elijah, who was delivered from famine, now at the brook by ravens, now in the desert by the angel, and now in Sarepta by the widow, all by that divine bounty which giveth food to all flesh in due season, delivering them from the distress of famine. By a wretched climax we fear ye descend, for your distrust of the divine goodness begets a leaning to your own understanding, and this leaning to your own understanding begets an anxiety for earthly things, and anxiety for earthly things takes away both the love and the study of books, and thus your poverty of this day is changed by abuse to the damage of the Word of God, which ye have chosen for its support alone.

By bribes of summer fruit, so people say, ye allure boys to your religion, and when they have professed it, ye do not instruct them in its doctrines by force and fear as their age requires, but suffer that they shall give themselves to running about begging, and permit them to consume the time in which they could be learning in catching after favours of friends, to the annoyance of their parents, the danger of the boys, and the harm of the order. And so, in sooth, it happens that they, who were not in any wise compelled, when they were boys, to learn against their will, being grown larger presume to teach, though wholly unworthy and untaught, and the error which was small at the beginning becomes very great at the end. For there grows up in your promiscuous flock a certain multitude of laymen, wholly burdensome, who nevertheless give themselves to the office of preaching the more importunately by as much as they understand not what they say, in contempt of the divine Word and to the ruin of souls.

Surely against the law ye are plowing with the ox and the ass, when ye commit the tilling of the Lord's field to the learned and the unlearned alike. It is written: The oxen were plowing and the asses feeding beside them. Wherefore, it is the part of the discreet to preach and of the simple to feed themselves in silence on the hearing of the Holy Word. How many stones in these days do ye cast upon the heap of Mercury! How many marriages do ye bring about for the eunuchs of wisdom! How many blind watchmen do ye instruct to walk about the walls of the church! O indolent fishermen! using only the nets of others, which, when torn, ye are so unskilled as to be scarce able to repair; but in no wise do ye furnish new ones. Ye are entered into the labours of others; ye recite the studies of others, and with dramatic mouthing ye utter the wisdom of others, superficially learned by rote. Even as the foolish parrot imitates the words it has heard, so these become the reciters of everything but authors of nothing, imitating Balaam's ass, which, though insensate within, yet, from its ready tongue, was made the instructor of its master, though a prophet. Come to yourselves, O ye poor in Christ, and regard us books with desire, for without us ye can never be duly shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace.

Paul the Apostle, the preacher of truth and notable teacher of the Gentiles, ordered to be brought to him by Timothy for all his baggage these three things: his cloak, his books, and his parchments (the last chapter of Second Timothy); thus giving example to evangelical men, that they should keep to a moderate dress, and have their books as a help for study, and also parchments for writing, which the Apostle especially esteems; Especially, he saith, the parchments. In truth that clerk is maimed and shamefully injured to his hurt in many ways who is wholly ignorant of the art of writing. He beats the air with his words and edifies only those that are present, but has nothing for those that are absent, and that come after him. The man who set the mark Tau upon the foreheads of them that sighed (in the Ninth of Ezekiel), wore upon his loins the ink-horn of a writer, teaching in a figure that if any one lack schooling in writing, he should not presume on the office of preaching repentance.

Finally, at the end of this present chapter, we books entreat you: Make your youth who are fit of mind apply themselves to study, providing them the necessaries; teach them not only goodness, but also discipline and knowledge; alarm them with blows; attract them with blandishments; soothe them with gifts, and urge them on by painful punishments that they may become alike Socratic in morals and Peripatetic in doctrine. Yesterday, as at the eleventh hour, the wise householder introduced you into his vineyard; before it be too late, may it repent you to have been so idle. O that with the wise steward ye had a shame of begging so importunately! for then in sooth ye would have greater leisure for study and for books.