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Subsection 8. Rivalry, hatred, faction and the desire for revenge as causes.
From this root of envy spring those deadly branches—faction, hatred, spite and rivalry—which cause similar distress and are “saws of the soul,” the soul’s saws; “passions full of consternation,” emotions filled with desperate bewilderment. Or, as Cyprian describes rivalry, it is a moth in the soul, a wasting disease: to make another person’s happiness one’s own misery, to torture, crucify and execute oneself, to eat one’s own heart. Food and drink do such people no good. They grieve, sigh and groan continually, day and night without respite; their breast is torn apart.
And a little later: Whoever it is you rival and envy, he may escape you, but you can escape neither him nor yourself. Wherever you are, he is with you; your enemy is always in your breast, your destruction within you. You are a captive, bound hand and foot as long as you remain malicious and envious, and you cannot be comforted. This was the devil’s downfall; whenever this passion fully possesses you, it will be yours. Yet no disturbance is more frequent, no passion more common.
Potter resents potter, and carpenter carpenter; Beggar envies beggar, and singer singer. A potter rivals a potter, One smith envies another; A beggar rivals a beggar, A singer his fellow singer.
Every society, corporate body and private family is full of it. It takes hold of almost every kind of person, from prince to ploughman; even among familiar companions it can be seen. Scarcely three people meet without two of them taking sides, forming factions or competing, with some “enmity,” quarrel, private grudge or resentment among them.
Scarcely two gentlemen live near one another in the country, unless they are close relatives or connected by marriage, without rivalry between them and their servants; some quarrel or grudge between their wives or children, friends and followers; some dispute over wealth, ancestry, precedence and so on. As a result, like Aesop’s frog, which tried to swell to the size of an ox and finally burst, they exceed their means and station, competing until they consume their property in lawsuits—or in hospitality, feasting and fine clothes to acquire a few inflated titles. For “we all suffer from ambitious poverty.” To outshine one another, they exhaust their bodies, wear away their souls, and beggar themselves through disputes or competitive entertaining.
Scarcely two great scholars live in the same age without bitterly attacking one another and one another’s followers: Scotists and Thomists, Realists and Nominalists, Plato and Aristotle, Galenists and Paracelsians, and so on. It holds true in every profession.
Honourable rivalry in study and in every calling is not to be condemned. It is “the whetstone of intelligence,” as someone calls it—the whetstone of wit, the nurse of intelligence and courage; that spirit inspired those noble Romans to heroic deeds. There is a restrained ambition: Themistocles was stirred by the glory of Miltiades, and Achilles’s trophies moved Alexander.
To seek advancement always is foolish presumption; To seek it never is idle arrogance.
It is a sluggish disposition never to compete or apply at all: to withdraw, neglect or refrain from positions, honours and offices through laziness, stinginess, fear, shyness or some other reason, when one’s birth, standing, means and education call one to them, and one is suited, qualified and well able to undertake them. But when ambition becomes excessive, it is a plague and a miserable torment.
How much money Henry VIII and Francis I, King of France, spent at that famous meeting! And how many vain courtiers, each trying to outshine the others, spent their livelihoods and fortunes and died as beggars! The emperor Hadrian was so galled by this passion that he killed all his equals; so did Nero. It made the tyrant Dionysius banish Plato and the poet Philoxenus because they excelled and, he thought, eclipsed his glory. It made the Romans exile Coriolanus, banish Camillus and murder Scipio; and the Greeks expel Aristides, Nicias and Alcibiades by ostracism, imprison Theseus, kill Phocion, and so on.
When Richard I and Philip of France fought alongside one another at the siege of Acre in the Holy Land, Richard proved himself the more valiant, so that everyone’s eyes were upon him. This so galled Philip—“the king’s victory burned the Frenchman,” says my authority; “he bore Richard’s glory so badly that he picked at his words and slandered his deeds”—that he found fault with all Richard’s proceedings and at last broke into open defiance. Unable to restrain himself any longer, he hurried home, invaded Richard’s territories and declared open war.
“Hatred stirs up contention,” Proverbs 10:12. At last they erupt into undying enmity and venom, into hatred and fury surpassing even Vatinius’s. They persecute each other, their friends, followers and all their descendants with bitter taunts, hostile wars, foul abuse, defamatory writings, slander, fire, sword and the like, and refuse reconciliation. Witness the Guelf and Ghibelline factions in Italy; the Adorni and Fregosi in Genoa; Gnaeus Papirius and Quintus Fabius in Rome; Caesar and Pompey; Orléans and Burgundy in France; York and Lancaster in England.
Indeed, this passion often rages so fiercely that it overthrows not only individuals and families but populous cities—Carthage and Corinth bear witness—and even turns flourishing kingdoms into wilderness. This hatred, malice, faction and desire for revenge first invented all those racks, wheels, strappadoes, bronze bulls, deadly instruments, prisons, inquisitions and harsh laws for wearing down and tormenting one another.
How happy we might be, ending our lives in blessed days and sweet contentment, if we could restrain ourselves; bear injuries as we ought; learn humility, meekness and patience; forget and forgive as God’s word commands; settle such final disputes among ourselves; moderate these passions; and think better of others than of ourselves, as Paul would have us. Be of one mind towards one another; do not avenge yourselves, but live in peace with everyone. Yet because we are so ill-tempered and perverse, insolent and proud, so factious and rebellious, so malicious and envious, we “oppress one another”: we batter and vex each other, torment and disturb one another, and plunge ourselves into that gulf of woes and cares. We aggravate our misery and melancholy, and heap hell and eternal damnation upon ourselves.