Moralia in Job 1034

52. Concerning the injustice and errors of prelates: the less perfect cry out and do not grieve; but the perfect keep silence and mourn. The perfect grieve the more over others' losses the less they grieve over their own. — What is it for the land to cry out, for the furrows to weep, and to eat one's own fruits by buying them? For whom is it ever necessary to buy his own? Who has ever heard the land crying out? Who has seen the furrows weeping? And since the furrows of the land are always of the land, what is it that, by a distinct pronouncement, both the land is said to have cried out, and its furrows are denied to have wept together with it? For since a furrow of the land is nothing other than the land, it is not without the ground of a great distinction that he subjoins: 'And its furrows weep together with it.'

In which matter, namely, because the order of the history fails, the mystical understanding shows itself to us as it were through doors now opened. As if it openly cried: Since you recognize that the sense of the letter has failed, it assuredly remains that you return to me without doubt. For everyone who either by private right rules a household family, or for the common good presides over faithful peoples, in this—that he possesses the rights of governance over the faithful committed to him—what else does he hold but land to be cultivated? For to this end is each one set over the rest by divine dispensation, that the mind of his subjects, as from tilled ground, may be made fruitful by the seed of his preaching.

But the land cries out against its possessor if against him who presides over it either a private household or the holy Church murmurs something just. For the land to cry out is for subjects reasonably to bewail against the injustice of the one governing. Where it is rightly subjoined: 'And its furrows weep together with it.' For the land, even when cultivated by no works, generally brings forth for the use of man some nourishment, but when ploughed it bears crops to satiety. And there are some who, cut open by no ploughshare of reading, by no ploughshare of exhortation, yet bring forth of themselves certain good things, though small, like land not yet ploughed.

But there are some who, intent on always hearing and retaining by holy preachings and meditations, cut open as it were by a certain ploughshare of the tongue from their former hardness of mind, receive the seeds of exhortation and render the crops of good work through the furrows of voluntary affliction. But it often happens that those who preside do certain unjust things, and it comes about that they themselves harm their subjects, whom they ought to have profited. And when the untutored behold these things, moved they murmur against the ruler, yet do not greatly grieve for their neighbours through compassion.

But when those who have now been worn smooth by the plough of reading, and cultivated toward the crop of good work, see the innocent burdened even in the least things, they are forthwith turned to lamentations through compassion, because they bewail as their own the things which their neighbours unjustly suffer. For the perfect, since they are always moved by spiritual things, know how to groan over others' bodily losses the more, the more they have now been taught not to grieve over their own.

Everyone, therefore, who presides, if he practises perverse things upon those under him, against him the land cries out and the furrows weep, because against his injustice the untutored peoples indeed burst forth in voices of murmuring, but all the perfect afflict themselves in weepings for his depraved work; and what the unskilled cry out and do not grieve over, this the subjects of more approved life bewail and keep silent. With the land crying out, therefore, for the furrows to mourn is, through that whereby the multitude of the faithful justly complains against the ruler, for men of richer life to come to lamentations.

The furrows, therefore, are both of the land, and yet are distinguished from the name of the land, because those who cultivate their mind in the holy Church by the labour of holy meditation are so much the better than the rest of the faithful, as through the seeds received they render the more fruitful crops of works. And there are some who, set over holy peoples, indeed obtain the stipends of life from ecclesiastical bounty, but do not expend the ministries of exhortation that are owed. Against whom the example of the holy man is further rightly subjoined, when it is forthwith added by him: