The Jealous Fool

That Job, the pattern and model of patience, had every sickness and malady upon him is the common teaching of the doctors; and some will have it that he suffered from gout in the highest degree, since he said: “Thou hast put my feet in the stocks.”¹ But if every sickness plagued him (the lung-sickness, the wasting sickness, the yellow sickness, the water sickness, the consuming sickness, the joint sickness, and the rest), there is still one sickness he did not suffer from, namely the jealous sickness. Of that, no one has ever heard that he suffered. And yet it is the hardest sickness of all: once it takes firm hold, it attacks the very brain and makes a fool of a man.²

St. Paul, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 7, verse 27, writes these words expressly when he treats of the married state: “Art thou bound to a wife? Seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? Seek not a wife. But if thou take a wife, thou hast not sinned. And if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned: nevertheless, such shall have tribulation of the flesh. But I spare you.”³ All of which is as much as to say: in marriage there are such unbelievably great tribulations that if I, Paul, were to bring them all to light and make them known, I fear nobody would marry at all. So St. Augustine, in his book on virginity, chapter 16.⁴ And among these tribulations very nearly the greatest is jealousy; so much so that in the Old Testament God prescribed a great many ceremonies, sacrifices, and remedies to clear this evil condition out of the way,⁵ and in the New Testament He has more than once worked miracles only to turn this evil sickness aside. The mother of Blessed Laurence Sossius fell under such wicked suspicion with her husband that he was already about to cut her down with a sabre, in the belief that he was not the true father of the boy. But the child, only ten days old, caught his arm in mid-stroke and broke out in these words: Quid agis, Pater? “What are you doing, father? I am your own child, and my mother is innocent.” So the Annals of the Servites.⁶

A poison of marriage. What more? A robber of peace. What more? A tearer-apart of hearts. What more? A rack for the heart. What more? A tyrant over the conscience. What more? A cloud over the understanding. What more? A very devil at home: that is jealousy. Ask at the fine abbey of Fürstenfeld in Bavaria who its founder was, and you will hear that it was built and endowed with handsome revenues by Ludwig the Severe, Duke of Bavaria, because out of groundless jealousy he had his dearest wife and consort Maria, a duchess of Brabant, put to death. For this, although he was a gentleman of twenty-seven, he turned so ice-grey in a single night that he looked like an old gaffer of seventy. So the Bavaria Sancta, volume 2.⁷ Among the Italians and the Spaniards this weed grows most of all, so that some of them waste away in their whole body from sheer jealousy and perish miserably. That is why they call this sickness gelosia: from continual care the blood, as it were, freezes, and so the vital spirits vanish.⁸ At Venice a whole book has been printed on this household plague, in which very terrible examples are to be read; it is entitled Antidoto della Gelosia, “The Antidote to Jealousy.”⁹ Justina, a maiden of Rome, noble and famous for her beauty, had married; and once, as she was taking off her shoes, she bared her foot a little. Her husband fell into such a fit of jealousy that he killed her on the spot. Hence the following verses:

My cruel husband put the sword to my neck
as I hastened to loose the bands from my snow-white foot,
hard by the bed where lately as a bride I lay,
where the honour of my maidenhood fell.
By no fault did I earn my death: I call Heaven’s goodness to witness.
I lie cut down by the lot of my own fate.
Learn from Justina’s example, fathers, learn
not to give your daughter to a fool of a husband.¹⁰

Great fools indeed, strong fools, strange fools, coarse fools, fools of great show and great weight, are the jealous.¹¹ A jealous man (look him well over) is like the iron cock on the roof, turning this way and that the whole time. A jealous man (take a good look at him) is like a hen, forever scratching, scraping, scrabbling, and searching. A jealous man (consider him well) is like a lion, which keeps its eyes open even in its sleep. To this fool every aspect is a suspect. Every walk his wife takes is a balk; every pace a disgrace; every greeting a cheating; every smile a wile; every glance a lance.¹² She would like to talk, and dare not; she would like to laugh, and must not; she would like to greet someone, and does not trust herself; she would like to thank someone, and does not venture it. Whatever good is said of her, he does not believe; whatever evil is spoken of her, that he believes.

“Monsieur,” says some old hexameter-hag, “your lady talks with so-and-so in church during the prayers.”

“Morbleu!” says the fool. “Then the Placebo Domino won’t be far off.”¹³

“Monsieur,” says some old pleated fur-bonnet, “your lady made so-and-so a pretty curtsey.”

“Morbleu!” says he. “Making a reverence means something else, saving your reverence.”¹⁴

“Monsieur,” says a toothless and tameless old crone, “your lady got a lovely nosegay from so-and-so.”

“Morbleu!” says he. “Devil take the forget-me-not in it!”

“Monsieur,” says a mouldy old Salve-cheese, “at the last party your beloved danced with so-and-so more often than with anyone else.”

“Morbleu!” says the fool, or thinks it. “That dance threatens to cut me a caper on my forehead,” and so on.¹⁵

O fool above all fools! How often we men judge wrongly, and in so doing would lay hands on the omnipotence of the most high God, who alone holds the key to the human heart! Why, the apostles once took the Saviour himself for a ghost: “They thought it was an apparition.”¹⁶ Even when a thing seems as plain as can be to the touch, we can still be mistaken, as happened to old Isaac, who felt Jacob’s hands and took them for the hands of Esau.¹⁷

A certain man, at any rate, was paid out very handsomely by his own wife. Out of jealousy he kept her so close and so strictly that she always had to hide herself, like a diving duck. Even the windows were forbidden her, so that she was forced, as it were, to turn from a wife into a domi-cella, a damsel in a cell at home.¹⁸ The fool went so far in his folly that he even commanded her not to think of any man at all, even if the thought in itself were good. Once, when he was away for only a few hours, she made herself a splendid afternoon spread, and picked a pair of hazel-hens, along with other tasty morsels, so clean that nothing was left but the little bones. When he came home soon afterwards and saw it:

“Well,” says he, “I see you’ve enjoyed yourself, and God bless it to you. But you foolish woman, you might have left something for me!”

“O my husband,” was her answer, “truly, I never thought of you. You forbade it me so strictly, and laid it on me that I must not think of any man,” and so on.

There’s a ninny for you!¹⁹