That the covetous ought to be scolded as fools appears from this: God Himself has given them the title, as may be seen and read in the twelfth chapter of Luke. There we are told of a rich fellow who had such a mass of crops that he did not know what to do with them, for his barns and granaries were far too small. So this dreamer broke his own sleep over it at night, while a poor man would have slept on without a care. And while this same rich man was in the very midst of his crotchets and fancies, there comes a voice from God and calls him a fool: “Thou fool,” and so on; you fool and senseless man, this very night your soul shall be required of you, “and whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?”1 The money and goods you have scraped together, who is going to get them?
O fool above all fools! The rich glutton at least gave himself a good time.2 All his days he kept splendid banquets. The four elements were ever at his service: the air supplied the feathered game, the earth gave him every kind of beast and fruit, the water furnished him with fish, and the fire had to be forever boiling and roasting. Eating and drinking and all the rest of the good life his father had settled on him like a marriage portion: “thou didst receive good things in thy lifetime,” and so on. With him every day was a feast day and a gorging day. In the end, at the very end, he went to the devil sure enough, and was buried in hell: requiescat in pice, may he rest in pitch!3 But you, besotted skinflint, you never give yourself a good day at all. You crack more cares than hazelnuts, you gnaw more kernels of want than kernels of almond, you drink more dregs than delight, and you go to the devil all the same.4 You have a hell in time and a hell in eternity! O fool! Be it summer or winter, you ride to the devil in a sleigh with bells on.5
Magdalene, the holy penitent, pleased God with her alabaster box and won heaven by it;6 but you, with your money-box, earn nothing but hell. St. Ascla with her fasting and suffering, St. Asidius with his fasting and suffering, St. Assentius with his fasting and suffering, all gained salvation; but an Asinus like you, an ass, with his fasting and suffering procures hell for himself.7 O fool!
“Whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?” Go on and hoard, then, you fool!8 In this you are not unlike the ants, which all summer long gather and store with the greatest labour and care; and when at last they are provided almost to overflowing, along comes a big-headed bear and devours the whole lot at one go. So with you, covetous fellow, down in hell: all that you scraped together with much worrying and borrowing, much running and puffing, much toil and sweat, along comes a bear (I may well say a bearskin idler), your son or your heir, and he devours it all and destroys it all.9 O fool, pull the cap and bells down off your ears, so that you can better hear what St. Valerian says: “It is a kind of folly to have made gain for others and prepared punishment for oneself.”10
In the thirteenth chapter of Luke we read how the Lord made whole a woman who was in a most wretched state, and it was the evil enemy who had brought it on her: “neither could she look upwards.”11 For eighteen whole years her body was so bent together that she could never look up, but only ever at the ground. Plenty of people have the same complaint: people who never in all their days look up at heaven, still less contemplate it, but all their thoughts are on the earth and on earthly things. Yellow earth and white earth: for what else are gold and silver? That is the one goal and aim of their hearts. Some, indeed, are so besotted that for a paltry sum they sign themselves over to the evil enemy and gamble away the salvation of their souls; and many there are who, over some small loss, go and hang or drown themselves. Are these not fools, then? Covetous fools are punished not only in eternity but often in time as well, as the following shows.
A distinguished nobleman, among his other noble virtues, was especially open-handed, above all towards the poor and needy, and never let one of them go from him without some particular help. His valet, on the other hand, was given over beyond all measure to avarice, so much so that whoever received anything from His Lordship had to pay him a share, and most of the time half. A crafty fellow found this out; and since there was no getting to His Lordship unless he promised the self-interested valet half of whatever he should receive, he very gladly promised and pledged it. When he had received a generous gift from the nobleman, he begged one further favour besides: a box on the ear, which he would be delighted to take from so generous a hand as a keepsake.12 At first the nobleman refused in every way; but at last, after so many and such earnest entreaties, he gave him one, a small one, hardly to be felt, more like a jest than anything. As the fellow withdrew with many thanks, the money-grubbing valet was on him at once, demanding half of what he had received.
“At once,” came the answer, “at once!” And with that he gave the skinflint such a box on the ear that he fell down the whole flight of stairs.
The racket brought the nobleman himself running out of his room to ask the cause of it all, and the fellow told him the whole affair in every particular: that he could not have got in to see him without promising the valet half of whatever he should receive from His Lordship’s generous hand; and since he had received money and a box on the ear, he had shared with him, keeping the money for himself and handing over the box on the ear. The nobleman did not begrudge the skinflint this in the least, and dismissed him from his service into the bargain.
Luke 12:16–21; the words are 12:20. Abraham cites only the chapter and gives the Latin in two pieces, Stulte, &c. and & quae parasti, cujus erunt?, each followed by his own German paraphrase.↩︎
The rich man of the parable of Lazarus, Luke 16:19–31; Abraham calls him der reiche Prasser, “the rich glutton.” The words quoted are 16:25. Abraham: recipisti bona in vita tua, &c.↩︎
A parody of the prayer for the dead, requiescat in pace, “may he rest in peace”: pice is “pitch,” the burning pitch of hell.↩︎
The German runs on jingles: mehrer Kummernuß als Hasel-Nuß (“more grief,” Kummernis, “than hazelnuts,” Nuss); Mangel-Kern als Mandel-Kern (“kernels of want than almond kernels”; the print has Maugel, a turned letter); mehrer Trübs als Liebs (“more of what is troubled than of what is pleasant”).↩︎
Schellen-Schlitten, a sleigh hung with bells, was a winter pleasure of the well-to-do; bells are also the fool’s badge.↩︎
Luke 7:37–38, the sinful woman with the alabaster box of ointment, whom Western tradition identified with Mary Magdalene. The German contrast is Allabaster-Büchse and Sparr-Büchse, a money-box.↩︎
The saints are picked for the sound, to land on Latin asinus, “ass.” St. Ascla (or Asclas) was a martyr of Antinoë in Egypt; the print gives the name a feminine pronoun, so Abraham may have meant St. Asella, the Roman virgin whom Jerome praised for her fasting. Asidius and Assentius are not identified.↩︎
Ey so sparr, du Narr, a rhyme: “well then, save, you fool.”↩︎
More rhymes: Sorgen und Borgen, Lauffen und Schnauffen, Fleiß und Schweiß. Bernheuter (Bärenhäuter, “bearskin-lounger”) was a common word for a lazy good-for-nothing, so the bear of the fable turns into the idle heir.↩︎
Cited by Abraham as St. Valerian, Homily 20. St. Valerian, bishop of Cimiez in the fifth century, left a collection of twenty homilies; the passage has not been verified. Abraham: Stultitiae genus est, aliis fecisse lucrum, et sibi parasse supplicium.↩︎
Luke 13:11; that the infirmity came from the devil is 13:16, “whom Satan hath bound.” Abraham: non poterat sursum respicere.↩︎
Maultasche, literally “mouth-pocket,” is the Austrian and Bavarian word for a slap or box on the ear, so the fellow can speak of “receiving” one and “handing it over” like a purse.↩︎