Bohemian Rulers and the Seven Virtues

CHAPTER 6 Bohemian Rulers and the Seven Virtues

As Solomon says in Proverbs: ‘Mercy and truth preserve the king: and his throne is upholden by mercy.’ But that there are four cardinal virtues, which all kings or dukes praise, elevate and decorate, i.e. justice, wisdom, modesty and power, because I will write down some exemplary and cau- tionary discourses on them in these books . . .1

Thus opens of John of Wales’s treatise on the four cardinal virtues, a work that reached the Czech lands in the 14th century at the latest, before being trans- lated into Old Czech. These and the subsequent lines belong to an apology, which John regarded as a complement to the models of virtuous life contained, according to him, in the Bible. The structure of John’s presentation of the cardinal virtues through ancient examples is worth a closer look. At a promi- nent place, he emphasizes the moral qualities of the ruler that are directly connected with the sacral dimension of his office. Mercy and truth, in other words charity (caritas) and true faith ( fides), are the basic principles by which a Christian ruler should abide in order to gain eternal grace. The latter is the focus of the third Christian virtue—hope (spes). The three virtues are however accompanied by justice, wisdom (prudence), temperance, and courage. Plato first defined the role of these virtues for the human soul and for social intercourse. Given that only reason can understand the real Good, it has the ability to organize the other, sensual parts of the soul. If one imagines the soul to be like a chariot, reason then plays the part of the charioteer. In order to do so, however, reason must be mature, i.e., reach the virtue of wisdom. It is through that virtue that reason can grasp the second component of the soul— irascibility, and educate it in order to strive for the good, in spite of all obsta- cles. Irascibility, controlled by reason, thus gains the form of a virtue that each medieval ruler of the Latin West was expected to show—courage. The third component of the soul is desire, the force that drives it towards the true good. The combination of desire and courageous irascibility is the basis for a fourth virtue—temperance. If that order of the soul is achieved, the person becomes just, since justice exists within each human only if each spiritual force does what it is supposed to do.2

1 Staročeský překlad spisu Jana Guallensis O čtyřech stěžejních ctnostech, 14. NB: Proverbs 20:28 . 2 Plato, The Republic, 1–185.

Consequently, only a ruler displaying all virtues was capable of a just rule, because only then he, as a person, could achieve inner harmony, which he could then transfer through justice to the rest of the society. The presence of the virtues in the sovereign’s character made it possible to affect the rule given and blessed by God, much like the same virtues gave inner strength to the saints, enabling them to perform miracles. The virtues were thus not only an adornment of the king’s personality, but also a means through which, as medieval authors had it, God’s grace that was bestowed on to the ruler spread out- wards from his heart. In short, much like the saints, the medieval ruler “earned” his charisma, because his personal virtues were demonstrated outside his personality.3 In the Middle Ages, the ancient and Christian virtutes were collapsed into a single, interconnected, and organic whole. That whole was described by Thomas Aquinas, not only virtue by virtue, but also in the mutual relations between them.4 The organic whole of the virtues was applied in the Middle Ages to the deeds of rulers, members of the secular or ecclesiastical aristoc- racy, townspeople, as well as peasants. According to John of Wales, who cites St Augustine in that respect, the seven powers of the human souls (virtues) are interconnected:

If I turn the virtues to something other than God, I will therefore call them sins more than virtues, because virtue in this life is nothing else than to live that which should be loved. This is proved by what St Augustin says: “Wisdom is loved by God; it does not overflow in luck but its modesty is to keep it pure; in all adversities to not deviate from it is strength; follow- ing it is justice”5

Justice is the central virtue in John’s conception, to which he devotes an exten- sive set of exempla. Those examples are meant to demonstrate the necessity and importance of justice as the basic power adorning the sovereign’s actions. Without justice, a reign is merely a grand roguery, according to John.6 The king’s role of mediator of justice on earth is symbolically defined, among other things, by the position of the king piece on the chessboard: “. . . in the midst of them you [a speech addressed to King Evilmerodach] are set as the

3 Beumann, Die Historiographie des Mittelalters, 472–473; and further 474n, an inspirational analysis of virtues in the historiography of the period ranging from Charlemagne to the Salian dynasty. 4 Summa theologii I–II, chaps. 49–67. 5 Staročeský překlad spisu Jana Guallensis O čtyřech stěžejních ctnostech, 67–68. 6 Ibid., 14.