Book IV

Lamentations about the downfall of the Church and especially of Jerusalem. While these events were taking place, tears are flowing, sighs are being drawn out, and voices are being raised on high in lamentation and shrieking. For people were disturbed by unaccustomed fear, internally confused and tremulous at heart, the flower of nobility perished, the writing hand grew weak. For, on account of the tares of the enemy choking the harvest of Christ, the disruptions of the thorns were multiplied, so that the wheat became scarce in the field of the holy Church, which was entirely overgrown by weeds. ¹ For where was there a man of wisdom and intelligence? Where were laws, rights, justice, religion, peace, truth, the chastity of married life, the celibacy of the spiritual life? Does not the prophet say: ‘They have broken out’, more than in the past, ‘by swearing and lying, and killing and stealing, and committing adultery, and blood touches blood’. ² So too, is it not according to Isaiah that ‘the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable’. ³ Thus bowels (viscera) rightly tremble, and hearts filled with fear. For because of this the judgement of God, from which nobody can escape, is threatening, even though He, the Father of mercy, still seeks rather to save than to damn. Thus He strikes with a sparing hand, although He does indeed inflict just punishment, but He [also exercises] patience, still allowing time for emendation. The Apostle says: ‘do you not know that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?’ ⁴ But since you refuse the riches of His goodness, you not undeservedly incur the stone of sin. For Jeremiah says: ‘What has my beloved to do in mine house, seeing she hath wrought lewdness with many?’ ⁵ Who should be the beloved, I ask, if not the community of the servants of God? But, as one who is less wise, I shall say, who is to reveal their sins, who is able to number them? For indeed, do they not ‘have eyes, yet they see not’. ⁶ They hear the law of God, they understand the Holy Scriptures, but they do 133not do what they say. For you do what you say you will not, and although you say you will not steal, you steal. You who sit gloriously on the throne (cathedra) in church – the throne not of Moses, nor of the Apostles, but of the Lord himself, you judge your neighbour. What, I say, about trust or morality? For insofar as you judge another, you condemn yourself. But if, for example, you do not stay your hand from exploiting the poor, you conspire against me, so that I shall remember you as a thief. For does not the Truth say: ‘He that enterest not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up by some other way, the same is a thief and a robber’? ⁷ But you say, ‘I have entered by the door’, if perhaps the church consents to your election. To this the Lord replies: ‘I am the door of the sheep; by me, if any man shall enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture’. ⁸ If indeed you have entered by the door, and dwell in the pastures of the Lord, why do the sheep not hear you, but rather flee from you? For they do not hear the voices of strangers. For the thief does not come except to steal, slay and destroy. If therefore the sheep do not hear you, it is clear that you have not entered by the door, since in truth you do not know what it is to enter by the door. Whence you should know that every prelate who harms the Lord’s sheep by word or deed is a thief, and slays and destroys them. Although ‘evil communications corrupt good manners’, ⁹ [this occurs] not only through evil communications, but also evil works, deception, trickery, lying and perjury. For those who ensnare are themselves ensnared, and they choose ensnarement when they render service to God. Those who are ensnared say, however: ‘now the end of time is at hand, for there is no reverence for the clergy’. For it is said about the priests of Christ: ‘men shall call you the ministers of God’. ¹⁰ And again: ‘touch not mine anointed’. ¹¹ How rightly these words are applied to them, if they do not contradict them by their way of life. For now everyone wishes to be clergy in law, but not through religion. But since they are clergy neither through duty nor through religion, they are through just judgement not considered as such either by God or men. Since their life is despised, it is natural that their preaching is rejected. The Lord also confutes them through the Psalmist, saying:

What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth? Seeing thou hatest instruction and casteth my words behind thee. When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers. ¹²

134And other things are here recorded concerning wicked priests. However, this wickedness of prelates is by the secret judgement of God accustomed frequently to be accompanied by sins of those subject to them, according to this text: ‘as with the people, so with the priest’. ¹³ And this text: ‘God makes the hypocrite to reign because of the sins of the people’. ¹⁴ And the Lord: ‘he that is of God heareth God’s word; ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God’. ¹⁵ And Jeremiah: ‘thy way and thy thoughts have procured these things unto thee’. Again [he says]: ‘the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests applaud with their hands, and my people love to have it so’. ¹⁶ Hence prelates are not rashly reproved by those subject to them, nor should these subjects suffer capital judgement from prelates, knowing that such prophets and priests whom the Lord once drove from the Temple destroyed the walls of Jerusalem, since if these people had not stained it by their wicked behaviour, it would never have been held in contempt by the gentiles. The Lord had previously wept over its destruction, which then indeed came to pass at the hands of Titus Vespasian, for it killed the prophets, and stoned those who had been sent unto it, ¹⁷ and did not fear to lay hands on the Lord himself. These events were founded on the blood of this same Lord, and were confirmed by his death and resurrection. By not respecting that life-giving sacrament, and by failing properly to honour the holy places, this has led to the utmost confusion, so that one may say with Jeremiah:

We lie down in our confusion, and our shame covers us, for we have sinned against the Lord our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even unto this day, and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God. ¹⁸

However, now let us make an end to these things, and turn our pen to the destruction of the holy city.