Iberian Fathers, Volume 1

Driving Away Vanity

DRIVING AWAY VANITYI (Pro repellenda iactantia) Chapter 1 There are many kinds of vices by which human frailty is attacked and by whose wounds almost all men are hurt. Just as these vices, moreover, are committed by everyone, so are they recognized by everyone. To mention only a few of many, there is one man who is overcome by wrath and is a servant to murder, homicide, uprising, and sedition. Another man is driven on by greed, and practices cruelty, avarice, false testimonies, violence, perjury, theft, lying, and cheating.2 Another man is debased with lust and succumbs to obscene language, mockery, scurrilous talk, adulteries, and fornication. Another man is conquered by the gluttony of his throat and belly and becomes a slave to eating, drinking to excess, and drunkenness.3 Not to go into numerous details, which it would take too long to mention, although it is clear that various individuals are attacked by one or another of these vices, there is one disease among all of them which makes men subject to its terms, not individually or only a few men, but all men together, and while other vices claim as their own each separate man whom they overcome, this one vice is not content until it is master over all. This is the vain desire for praise, which the Greeks call cenodoxia and the 1 Cf. Introduction pp. 7-9 for this and the two following works. 2 Cf. Matt. 15.19. 3 Cf. Cassian, Coli. 5.16.5 (CSEL 13.142-143). 35 36 MARTIN OF BRAGA Latins vana gloria or iactantia.4 I shall describe the nature of this evil and how it wounds all human beings. Chapter 2 While in all the pursuits of this life some things please the human race more, some less, there is nothing sought by any man with more eagerness than human praise. Other things may be acquired with the most ardent ambition and greed, but after they have been possessed, no matter how great they are, they gradually become distasteful as a result of daily use. But the more this meaningless desire of vainglory is satisfied, the more it is sought, so that there is none of all his works which a man desires more than to be praised, nor is there a single thing that he would consider it more agreeable to receive than someone's admiration for him as a man of renown. This is what kings are eager for; this judges, city people and country people, men and women, boys, adolescents, young men and old, all seek after this. They all want to be praised, however falsely they are praised. Thus boys claim for themselves the skill of adolescents. Adolescents falsely pretend that they are as strong as young men. Young men desire to be credited with the wisdom of old men. Old men, because they can go no further, turn back and demand the fame of their past deeds. Women, although prevented by their sex, boast of men's strength and abilities. Country people want to appear like city people. Judges want to be granted the same prerogatives that kings have. Kings dream that they are as powerful as God. And so while each of them wants to seem greater than he really is, he seizes in enemy fashion and claims as booty the glory of the praise which is truly due to God alone. Hence 4 Cf. Cassian. Inst. 11.1 (CSEL 17.195). "Vainglory" is a reasonable rendering of the Greek word here quoted and of the first Latin one; the second Latin word. used also in Martin's title, carries the connotation of "boastfulness," DRIVING AWAY VANITY 37 arises that sacrilege of the blasphemous, which is the most wicked deed possible, that since man seizes everything pertaining to praise, all that is left to offer to God is blame. The human race has exceeded its limit when you cannot find a man who does not want to be as admired as God. What limit can there be, then, to such as have mortgaged the very heaven to whose heights only the humble may attain? Chapter 3 For those who have usurped the things above, all that is left, so it seems to me, is the things below. They have no higher place to which to ascend, for the result of their constant ascending is that all they have left...