The Four Last Things - by St Thomas More : Of Envy

Sir Thomas More. Holbein the Younger (1527). Frick Collection.

The following posts reproduce the text and notes of an edition by D. O’Connor published in 1903 which is close to the English original of 1557. 

The 1903 footnotes are shown as [ ] and my own as [ ].

 

👈While outwardly he enjoyed a life of comfort, in the privacy of his spiritual life he wore a hair shirt, attended daily Mass, and practised a strict discipline of prayer. He is believed to have become a Third Order Franciscan (and indeed his name is listed in the calendar of Franciscan saints). This may be the significance of the cord shown. 

Sancte Thoma 

Ora pro nobis.

Of Envy

Now let us see what help we may have of this medicine against the sickness of envy, which is undoubtedly both a sore torment and a very consumption. For surely envy is such a torment that all the tyrants in Sicily never devised a sorer. 

The image of death

And it so drinketh by the moisture of the body and consumeth the good blood, so discoloureth the face, so defaceth the beauty, disfigureth the visage, leaving it all bony, lean, pale and wan, that a person well set awork with envy needeth none other image of death than his own face in a glass. This vice is not only devilish but also very foolish. For, albeit that envy, where it may hover, doth all the hurt it can, yet sith the worse most commonly envieth the better, and the feebler the stronger, it happeth for the more part that, as the fire of the burning hill of Etna burneth only itself, so doth the envious person fret, fume and burn in his own heart without ability or power to do the other hurt. And little marvel it is, though envy be an ungracious graft, for it cometh of an ungracious stock.

Envy the daughter of pride.

It is the first-begotten daughter of pride, gotten in incest by the devil, father of them both. For as soon as the devil had brought out his daughter pride, without wife, of his own body, like as the venomous spider bringeth forth her cobweb, when this poisoned daughter of his had holpen[1] him out of heaven, at the first sight Adam and Eve in paradise set in the way to such worship, the devil anon took his own unhappy daughter to wife, and upon pride begat envy ; by whose enticement he set upon our first parents in paradise and by pride supplanted them, and there gave them so great a fall by their own folly that unto this day all their posterity go crooked thereof. And therefore ever since envy goeth forth mourning at every man’s welfare, more sorry of another man’s wealth than glad of her own, of which she taketh no pleasure if other folk fare well with her. In so far forth that one Publius, a Roman, when he saw one Publius Mutius sad and heavy, whom he knew for an envious person. Surely, quoth he, either he hath a shrewd[2] turn himself or some man else [hath] a good turn, noting that his envious nature was as sorry of another man’s weal as of his own hurt.

A fable of Aesop of envy

I cannot here, albeit I nothing less intend than to meddle much with secular authors in this matter, yet can I not here hold my hand from the putting in remembrance of a certain fable of Aesop ; it expresseth so properly the nature, the affection and the reward of two capital vices, that is to wit, envy and covetise[3]. Aesop, therefore, as I think ye have heard, feigneth that one of the paynim[4] gods came down into earth, and finding together in a place two men, the one envious, the other covetous, shewed himself willing to give each of them a gift, but there should but one of them ask for them both ; but look, whatsoever that one that should ask would ask for himself, the other should have the self-same thing doubled. When this condition was offered, then began there some courtesy between the envious and the covetous whether of them should ask, for that would not the covetous be brought unto for nothing, because himself would have his fellow’s request doubled. And when the envious man saw that, he would provide that his fellow should have little good of the doubling of his petition. And forthwith he required for his part that he might have one of his eyes put out. By reason of which request the envious man lost one eye, and the covetous man lost both. 

Lo ! such is the wretched appetite of this cursed envy ready to run into the fire so he may draw his neighbour with him. Which envy is, as I have said, and as St Austin saith, the daughter of pride, in so far forth that, as this holy doctor saith, strangle the mother and thou destroyest the daughter. And therefore look what manner [of] consideration in the remembrance of death shall be medicinable against the pestilent swelling sore of pride, the self-same considerations be the next remedies against the venomous vice of envy. For whosoever envies another, it is for something whereof himself would be proud if he had it. Then if such considerations of death as we have before spoken of in the repressing of pride should make thee set neither much by those things, nor much the more by thyself for them, if thyself hadst them, it must needs follow that the self-same considerations shall leave thee little cause to envy the self-same things in any other man. For thou wouldst not for shame that men should think thee so mad to envy a poor soul for playing the lord one night in an interlude. And also couldst thou envy a perpetual sick man, a man that carrieth his death’s wound with him, a man that is but a prisoner damned[5] to death, a man that is in the cart already carrying forward ? For all these things are, as I think, made meetly[6] probable to thee before. It is also to be considered that, sith it is so that men commonly envy their betters, the remembrance of death should, of reason, be a great remedy thereof. For, I suppose, if there were one right far above thee, yet thou wouldst not greatly envy his estate, if thou thoughtest that thou mightest be his match the next week ; and why shouldst thou then envy him now, while thou seest that death may make you both matches the next night, and shall undoubtedly within few years? 

A similitude

If it so were that thou knewest a great duke[7] keeping so great estate and princely port in his house that thou, being a right mean man, hadst in thine heart great envy thereat, and specially at some special day in which he keepeth for the marriage of his child, a great honourable court above other times ; if thou being thereat, and at the sight of the royalty and honour shewed him of all the country about resorting to him, while they kneel and crouch to him, and at every word bareheaded begrace[8] him ; if thou shouldst suddenly be surely advertised that, for secret treason lately detected to the King, he should undoubtedly be taken the morrow, his court all broken up, his goods seized, his wife put out, his children disinherited, himself cast in prison, brought forth and arraigned, the matter out of question, and he should be condemned, his coat armour reversed, his gilt spurs hewn off his heels, himself hanged, drawn and quartered ; how thinkest thou by thy faith amid thine envy, shouldst thou not suddenly change into pity?

Surely so it is that if we considered everything aright, and esteemed it after the very nature, not after men’s false opinion, sith we be certain that death shall take away all that we envy any man for, and we be uncertain how soon, and yet very sure, that it shall not be long, we should never see cause to envy any man, but rather to pity every man, and those most that most hath to be envied for, sith they be those that shortly shall most lose.

Footnotes

[1] Helped.

[2] hurtful; dangerous, injurious. Obsolete.

[3] Avarice. Here, Inordinate or excessive desire for the acquisition and possession of wealth, etc.; esp. of possessing what belongs to another; = covetousness.1297–1652 : OED

[4] Pagan.

[5] Condemned.

[6] Properly.

[7] An allusion to the execution of the Duke of Buckingham on a charge of high treason in 1521.

[8] To address (a person) as ‘your grace’. (OED citing this very line).

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The Virgin of Tenderness. >12th century.

SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen. 

 

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.

He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin. They that explain me shall have life everlasting. Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) xxiv. 30-31.30-31.