Charity, treasure and the artist's duties · Lexicon

From the book

The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I

Attributed to Abraham the Jew · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordCharity is the English grouping for the uses the writer prescribes for the artist’s acquired treasure. The source states those duties through concrete recipients and actions.
In the bookThe successful artist is to build hospitals, feed the poor, receive strangers, and share with widow and orphan, while remembering future judgment.
TranslationTreasure and the named charitable acts follow the French. Charity is an editorial headword here, not a claim that charité occurs in this paragraph.
A place to readRead 79v–80r, scans 188–189a, across the break from acquiring treasure to accounting for its use.

Meaning

The treasure is the successful work’s gift as the author understands it. Its acquisition brings an obligation concerning use. The account of abundance therefore contains a rule for conduct as well as promises of contentment, knowledge, and freedom from infirmity.

The artist’s duties are expressed through specific acts. Hospitals, food, hospitality, and sharing identify who should benefit. The final remembrance of judgment presents possession as something for which an account must be given.

Use in the book

On 79v, scan 188, the author imagines a person content even alone, possessing everything, needing nothing, free from disease, ambition, and fear of losing riches. Knowledge of nature and religion accompanies this fortunate condition. He asks whether such a person enjoys eternal pleasures in advance. The promised contentment sets the context for the rule about treasure.

The same side turns to the artist who has won the Golden Fleece and received the treasure God grants. A sentence begins by refusing its use to purchase honorable offices, farms, and lordships. It continues on 80r, scan 189a, with the positive duties. Reading across the break keeps the contrast between private advancement and prescribed public benefit intact.

The artist is directed to build hospitals, feed poor people, receive strangers, and share with widow and orphan. These acts are concrete consequences of successful possession. The passage does not merely praise generosity in the abstract; it states how the treasure is to be employed.²²⁰

The writer then directs attention toward the glory of God, Mary, and the Catholic, apostolic, Roman edifice, and toward the future judgment at which so great a treasure must be accounted for. The specifically confessional setting belongs to the text. The ethical rule should retain both its named beneficiaries and its stated religious ground.

This passage also qualifies the book’s rhetoric of secrecy and abundance. Restricted teaching is supposed to protect the work, while acquired wealth is supposed to support others. The lexicon records this conjunction without inferring a wider institutional program beyond the duties actually stated.

Places to read

Manuscript 79v · Scan 188Promised contentment leads to the artist’s acquired treasure and the beginning of the rule for its use.
Manuscript 80r · Scan 189Hospitals, food, hospitality, sharing, and future judgment complete the rule.

Translation

Treasure translates trésor. Hospitals, the poor, strangers, widow, and orphan retain the passage’s concrete nouns. Future judgment follows jugement futur. The source’s artist is the successful practitioner of the work.

Charity is used as a convenient thematic headword for those prescribed acts. It should not be counted as an attested French lemma in these passages. The attested forms below name the actual words through which the duty is expressed.

trésor

Attested: H001-S188; H001-S189a. The acquired gift must be used and finally accounted for.

hôpitaux

Attested: H001-S189a. Building hospitals is the first positive prescribed use.

pauvres

Attested: H001-S189a. The poor are named as recipients of nourishment.

jugement futur

Attested: H001-S189a. The artist is to remember the account owed for the treasure.

Source note

Manuscript 79v–80r, scans 188–189a. The rule begins on the first side and ends before a new exposition on the second. H001-S189a identifies that concluding portion; the following unit has a different subject.