The Devil Wins: A History of Lying from the Garden of Eden to the Enlightenment (27 page)

Quite early on in the
Policraticus
, John adopts a version of Cicero’s distinction between common and specific duties. “The principles of nature are binding upon all alike,” John informs us, “considerations of duty, upon particular individuals.”
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Appropriate action for John, as for Cicero, depends on self-knowledge. The man of eminence must understand his boundaries, his limits and frailties. He must know “what is within him, what without, what below, what above, what opposite, what before, and what after.”
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Tellingly, John also suggests that he must understand and adapt to the specific contexts in which he seeks this knowledge. Immediately before embarking on his critique of flatterers, John distinguishes between two kinds of self-knowledge, the knowledge we acquire through faith and the knowledge we acquire through learning. While faith trumps learning in the long run, learning cannot be ignored. “Let the rule of faith be deferred,” John writes, “as it will be discussed in its own time and place. Learning then involves knowledge of self, which cannot be attained if it fails to measure its own strength or if it is ignorant of the strength of others.”
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John’s skepticism compels him, as it would John Rainolds in the sixteenth century, to adopt a fundamentally rhetorical
orientation toward the world. “Those things are of doubtful validity,” John writes, “which are supported by authority of neither faith, sense or apparent reasons and which in their main points lean towards either side.” While at first this might sound as if it holds open the possibility for quite a bit of certainty about things, John’s subsequent list of doubtful subjects rather quickly quashes any such hope. We can have no certainty, he tells us, concerning providence, “the substance, quantity, power, efficacy and the origin of the soul,” nor about fate and free will. Nor do we possesses any certainty about an increasingly vast array of moral and ethical matters such as “the use, beginning and end of all virtues and vice, whether everyone who possesses one virtue possesses all, or whether all sins are equal and to be punished equally.” Human ingenuity is also at a loss when it comes to determining the status of “duties and the various kinds of situations which arise in reference to agreements and quasi agreements; to misdemeanors and quasi misdemeanors or to other matters.”
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Lacking universally binding first and certain principles to serve as regulative ideals in guiding our behavior, we are forced to make do with merely probable theses, whose applicability to any given situation is always open to modification depending on the ever-changing situation at hand.

The significance of John’s adoption of a rhetorical approach to the world and ethics in the
Policraticus
’s opening books appears in a variety of guises. More often than not, it shows up when John suggests that generally accepted ethical principles be modified or ignored in certain situations. John, for example, goes on at length about the indignity of hunting, referencing such authorities as Horace, Valerius Maximus, scripture, and the Church fathers. Hunting, he informs us, debases noble natures, rendering hunters worse than peasants and barely on par with the animals themselves. Toward the end of this diatribe which, for all intents and purposes, forms something like a dialectical argument from probable principles against hunting, John adopts a rhetorical mode of analysis. Is hunting necessarily bad? Not at all. While it is all too often abused, considered on its own it is a morally indifferent activity. “Therefore,” John concludes, “it is quite possible, depending
upon the circumstances, time, manner, individual, and purpose, for hunting to be a useful and honorable occupation.”
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John performs precisely the same move from dialectical to rhetorical analysis when he considers gambling, an activity to be abhorred, “in which one becomes more depraved in proportion as his skill in it increases.”
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This probable moral thesis notwithstanding, John then argues that there is nothing wrong with gambling given the proper circumstances. John writes, “The circumstances that regulate all freedom from restraint are dependent upon a preceding consideration of place, time, individual, and cause. It is this consideration which makes all transactions appear beautiful or condemns them as morally ugly. In each individual case many roles are to be considered since nature, situation, and fortune each invests a man with its own garb and from these he must choose that which in his own case is becoming.”
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Circumstances, when properly concatenated, can override even the most probable of probable theses.

While few would object to the occasional hunt or roll of the dice, John applies his rhetorical ethics to other, more morally dubious endeavors. Having raged against the flatterers throughout most of the
Policraticus
’s third book, John asks, in the final chapter, if there is anyone the man of eminence is allowed to flatter. John answers, famously, yes. “It is lawful to flatter him whom it is lawful to slay,” he writes, “and it is not merely lawful to slay a tyrant but even just and right.”
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And so, there are special circumstances in which flattery itself becomes morally appropriate. While the flattery and assassination of tyrants is the most extreme case John considers, the power of circumstances to free us from normal moral restraints against flattery and lying shows up in numerous places throughout the early sections of the
Policraticus
. Midway through his discussion of flatterers, John abruptly and without warning offers some surprisingly underhanded tips. “The art of flattery,” he writes, “is very effective when you appear to be negligent of your own interests and attend to those of others; speaking of your own profit never or rarely, but always, or at least often, of his whose favor you are currying.”
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Several pages later, he adds, “If you are ambitious to outstrip those who are lavish with
promises and gifts, in the esteem of him with whom you are currying favor, you should associate yourself with his financial secrets…. You must worm your way into his secrets at any cost.”
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No doubt these are exceptions to standard moral principles, but they are legitimate exceptions made acceptable by the circumstances.

John is in no way suggesting anything like a moral free-for-all in which the man of eminence can justify any action whatsoever through recourse to difficult circumstance. Each of us has our duties, our role to fulfill, the moral “garb” that fits us best, and those duties, to ourselves, our fellows, our state, and to God, must determine how we act at any given moment.
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In normal circumstances, perhaps these decisions are easy and recourse to standard and generally accepted moral principles can successfully guide us. Unfortunately, the court, perhaps this entire fallen world, is no normal place. Self-serving duplicitous courtiers (“those whose intercourse is not in the heavens,” as John describes them at one point) surround and attempt to deceive us. To people like these, John contends, we can afford neither “affection nor friendship.”
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John often describes the world as a comedy or tragedy, a stage play in which people have taken on false roles. Just as often, he invokes metaphors of combat and warfare. If negotiating one’s way through the world of the court is akin to combat, then the rules of combat apply, and John wholly approves the use of
strategemmata
, cunningly wrought military deceptions, in overcoming our enemies.
⁷⁵

Medieval canon lawyers and theologians had a word for the epistemological condition associated with these sorts of impossibly confused types of ethical conundrums: they called it “perplexity.” Court writers from at least as early as the twelfth century and continuing without interruption for the next six or seven hundred years consistently depict the world as a place in which the individual is in a near-constant state of moral perplexity, in which uncertainty proliferates with every chance encounter, leaving the individual with no morally pure alternatives. Sometimes we must sin to avoid greater sins, to achieve some great good, or prevent some great harm, and sometimes we must sin simply to avoid incurring
displeasure, anger, or social embarrassment. In his
Decretum
, the great legal treatise from the mid-twelfth century, the Bolognese canon lawyer Gratian, drawing on ideas from Gregory the Great and others, suggested that we do indeed face such moments of perplexity when, say, we are caught between lying or breaking an oath. In such cases, Gratian contends, when “an inescapable danger compels us to perpetrate one of two evils, we must choose the one that makes us less guilty.” The glossators whose commentary accompanies Gratian’s work, as well as Thomas Aquinas, argue that such moments of moral perplexity are entirely subjective, “arising only in the mind and from foolish opinion.”
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The glossators assume that any and all moral perplexities can be resolved through analysis of the situation and the options it presents, even if the sinless choice with which we are left is a difficult one.

Gratian, by contrast, seems to assume that the world itself is morally ambiguous, offering us few good options, fewer certainties, and all too many situations that require us to sin, if only to avoid worse sins. This is what it means to live east of Eden, in the Devil’s world. Gratian quotes Gregory to describe our predicament. “The sinews of the Leviathan’s loins are entangled because the purpose of his suggestions is entangled with tangled devices,” he writes. “Thus, many commit sins because hoping to avoid one, they cannot escape the snare of another.”
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In response to Gratian’s depiction of a morally perplexed world, the glossators assert the existence of a world whose moral contours are much more clearly delineated. “It must be stated,” they write, “that no one can really be in doubt between two evils in this way. For it would then follow that necessity can make one do something evil. But the canons say that God will never punish anyone unless he has done wrong voluntarily.”
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But this is Gratian’s point entirely: the world itself generates profound moral dilemmas, leaving us with no choice but to sin. “When there are walls on all sides,” he writes in a memorable metaphor, “and the way of escape is closed to prevent flight, the one fleeing throws himself off where the wall is lowest.”
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While the entire courtly tradition would share Gratian’s vision of a morally perplexed world, it would reject his belief that when
necessity compels us to choose the lesser evil, we are still guilty of sin.
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For John, the uncertainties the man of eminence faces justify deceptive ruses and tricks. Lies beget lies, and in the
Policraticus
’s prologue, John simply notes the wisdom of the psalmist’s observations that “every man is a liar.”
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Occasionally, John will deplore lies and mendacity. More often than not, he ignores Augustine’s well-known prohibitions and theses against lying, never mentioning them once, while admitting that he himself has had recourse to lies when it has suited his purposes.
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In the
Entheticus
, his poetic account of twelfth-century pedagogy and life in the court, John argues that “that deception is good which effects benefits, and by which joys, life and salvation are looked after.” The man of eminence must be all things to all people, feigning many things, to draw the sinful from their sins. Often, there is simply no other way. “The work of infiltration,” John notes, again invoking the language of combat and espionage, “recalls from vices those whom simple reason cannot recall.”
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C
HRISTINE DE
P
IZAN AND
J
UST
H
YPOCRISY

Christine de Pizan’s
Treasure of the City of Ladies
is a decidedly more practical and streamlined work than anything John ever wrote. A handbook to teach noblewomen how to negotiate the complicated personal, social, and political challenges of early fifteenth-century France, Christine simply assumes John’s entire philosophical and rhetorical framework as she plunges her readers into the maelstrom of the medieval court. Christine is quite up-front and unabashed about her work’s this-worldly orientation, and much of it is given over to the lessons of “Worldly Prudence,” whose “teachings and admonitions are not separate from those of God, but come from them and are based on them.” With her valorization of worldly prudence, Christine rejects those who would utterly condemn the active life in favor of a life of religious seclusion and prayer. There are two paths to God, Christine writes, the contemplative and the active, and while the contemplative life is the better life, the life most agreeable to God, the active life “has
more use in the world.”
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Utility, as it turns out, has its value both here and in heaven. “It does not displease God,” Christine writes, “for a person to live in this world morally, and if she lives morally she will love the blessing of a good reputation, which is honor.” Even Augustine, Christine adds, had warned that to live well a person needs both a good conscience and a “good reputation.”
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Christine not only links morality to the possession of a good reputation, she also emphasizes their interconnection. While living morally results in a good reputation, successfully maintaining one’s good reputation is a sign of moral worth.

Honor and good reputation, Christine notes, have little if anything to do with worldly riches and everything to do with “good manners and behavior.”
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In order to live an honorable life, Worldly Prudence suggests the noblewoman obey two overarching principles. She must carefully organize her daily activities in order to increase her standing in the court, and she must maintain a constant vigilance over her behavior.
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Nothing should be taken for granted, and her every activity must be calculated to achieve its maximum effect. Each day, she should rise early, say her prayers, and attend morning mass. Religious devotion, important though it is for our spiritual well-being, must be made to serve practical ends as well. “This lady will have such a good, orderly system,” Christine elaborates, “that as she leaves her chapel there will be some poor people at the door to whom she herself with humility and devotion will give alms from her own hands.” She will deal with her daily duties carefully and thoughtfully, surrounding herself with wise counselors, and later, when she has free time, she will share in useful activities with other women and girls, laughing and engaging with them so that “they will love her with all their hearts.”
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When it comes to her behavior, she will obey the counsel of sobriety, which governs how much she should sleep, drink, and eat. It will help her dress properly, and it will “correct, chastise and control the mouth and the speech of the wise lady.” Most important, sobriety will teach the princess to “hate with all her heart the vice of lying. She will love truth, which will be so habitually in her mouth that people will believe what she says and
have confidence in her as one has in a lady whom one has never heard lie.”
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