Many people are ruined in this way, numbed and so cast down that they never recover. Of all living people, those who are already melancholy or inclined to it are most sensitive, being suspicious, irritable, prone to misunderstanding and unable to bear this kind of injury. They magnify it and dwell on it continually, until it becomes a perpetual corrosive that cannot be removed until time wears it away.

Even if those who mock do so only for fun and amusement, and consider it “an excellent thing to enjoy another’s madness,” an excellent thing to enjoy another man’s madness, they must know that it is a mortal sin, as Thomas holds. As the prophet David declares, those who practise it shall never dwell in God’s tabernacle.

Such coarse jokes, jeers and sarcasms should therefore never be used, especially against our superiors or those who are miserable or in any way distressed. For them, “they are additions to suffering”: they multiply grief. As that author recognized, “in many, shame; in many, anger,” and so on: many are ashamed, many vexed and angered, and there is no greater cause or aggravation of melancholy.

Marcin Kromer, in book 6 of his history, has a telling story about this, concerning Vladislaus II, king of Poland, and Peter Dunninus, earl of Shrine. They had been hunting late and were forced to stay in a poor cottage. As they went to bed, Vladislaus joked that the earl’s wife was lying more comfortably with the abbot of Shrine. Unable to restrain himself, the earl replied, “And yours with Dabessus”—and yours with Dabessus, a handsome young gentleman at court whom Queen Christina loved. “The saying struck the prince’s mind”: these words so wounded him that he remained “sad and brooding,” very sad and melancholy, for many months. But they utterly ruined the earl, for when Christina heard of them, she pursued him to his death.

The empress Sophia, Justinian’s wife, made a bitter joke at the expense of Narses the eunuch, a famous commander then distressed by a recent defeat: he was better suited to a distaff and women’s company than to wielding a sword or commanding an army. But it cost her dearly. He resented it so deeply that, greatly troubled in mind, he immediately went over to the opposing side, caused the Lombards to rebel, and so brought many miseries upon the commonwealth.

The emperor Tiberius withheld from the people of Rome a bequest that his predecessor Augustus had recently left them. Seeing a man whisper into a corpse’s ear, he insisted on knowing why. The man replied that he was asking the departed soul to tell Augustus that the people of Rome had still not been paid. For this bitter joke, the emperor had him killed immediately, to carry the news himself.

For this reason, even those who otherwise approve of jokes on some occasions and of witty companions—and who does not? Let them laugh and be merry, “and let Codrus’s sides burst”; it is praiseworthy and fitting—even they will by no means allow such jesters among people at all inclined to this malady. “Do not joke with those who are miserable and afflicted”: no joking with a discontented person. This is Castiglione’s warning, and Pontano’s, and Galateo’s, and every good person’s.

Play with me, but do not hurt me; Joke with me, but do not shame me.

Pleasant sociability is a virtue between the two extremes of boorishness and coarse buffoonery, just as affability lies between flattery and quarrelsomeness. It must not go too far, but must always be accompanied by that “harmlessness,” or innocence, “which harms no one and recoils from every offer of injury”: it hurts no one and abhors all offered injury. Even if someone is open to such a joke or reproach, has behaved foolishly or committed a shameful act, it is neither good manners nor humanity to upbraid him, throw his offence in his face or mock him. As the old maxim says, “Every taunt directed at an accused man is shameful.”

I do not mean those who attack vice in general—Barclay, Gentilis, Erasmus, Agrippa, Fischart and others, the Varros and Lucians of our time, satirists, epigrammatists, comic dramatists, writers of fables and the like—but those who single people out, rail, mock, slander, attack them by name or insult them to their faces.

He who jokes with stupid insolence Is no Sestius, but a horse.

This is horseplay, and those jokes, as he says, are no better than injuries: biting jokes, “biting and barbed.” They are poisoned jokes, leave a sting behind them, and should never be used.

Do not put out your foot to trip the blind, Nor knowingly harm your weaker brother; Do not wound the dead with your tongue’s bitter venom, Nor rejoice when another falls.

If these rules could be observed, we would have far more ease and peace than we do, and less melancholy. Instead, we study how to mistreat one another, how to sting and wound, like two fighting boars, turning all our strength and wit, friends and fortunes, to tormenting one another’s souls. As a result, there is little contentment or charity among us, and much venom, hatred, malice and unrest.