Commentaria in I Regum (I Samuelis)
Whence Clement of Alexandria: “God,” he says, “to the people asking a king does not promise a human lord, but threatens that he will give an insolent tyrant, given over to lust and pleasures.” So Clement, p. 261. So also Abulensis, Cajetan, Serarius, Mendoza, Salianus and others. Nay the Philosophers think the same; whence Xenophon in the Memorabilia of Socrates, book 3: “A king,” he says, “is chosen not that he may take soft care of himself, but that through him those who chose him may live well and happily.” Seneca the Philosopher, book 1 On Clemency chap. 16, teaches that “not the servitude of the citizens, but their guardianship, was handed over to the king.” And chap. 19, he adds: “The Commonwealth is not the prince’s, but the prince is the Commonwealth’s.” Hence Homer called the king “the Shepherd of the peoples.” And Claudian to his Honorius:
Be thou citizen and father; take counsel for all, not for thyself: let not thine own losses move thee, but the public ones.
Finally the Romans, not enduring the insolent reign of Tarquin the Proud, expelled the kings from the city. Hear St. Augustine, book 5 On the City of God, chap. 12: “The Romans,” he says, “not enduring royal domination, made for themselves annual commands and two Commanders: who were called consuls from consulting, not kings or lords from reigning and lording it.” And a little after: “The royal pride was thought to be not the discipline of one ruling, or the benevolence of one taking counsel, but the arrogance of one lording it.”
13. YOUR DAUGHTERS ALSO HE WILL TAKE TO BE HIS PERFUMERS (makers of ointments, that is, of scents and unguents) AND COOKS (that is, female cooks, says the Chaldee, who work about the hearth; Vatablus, makers of dainties, for women know better than men how to cook for delicacies) AND BAKERS, that is, as the Chaldee has it, female millers, who pound fine bread.
Admirably Clement of Alexandria, book 2 of the Pedagogue, chap. 8: “Men among us,” he says, “ought above all not to smell of ointments, but of uprightness of life. And let the woman breathe of Christ, who is the royal anointing, not of ointments.” So he. And St. Jerome, book 3 Against Jovinian: “Perfumes,” he says, “and various incenses, and amomum, and musk, and the skin of a foreign mouse, that they suit the dissolute and their lovers, none but a dissolute man denies.” St. Ambrose agrees, book On Elias and Fasting, chap. 10: “They anoint themselves with ointment,” he says, “who seek for the body the grace of fragrance, but even those...” More forcibly St. Chrysostom, sermon 1 On Lazarus: “Thou ought not,” he says, “to smell of ointment, but to breathe virtue. Nothing is more unclean than the soul, whenever the body has such a fragrance. For the fragrance of body and garments proves that the soul within lies foul-smelling and unclean. For when the devil, having assailed it with delights, has unmanned the soul and filled it with every kind of vice, then he anoints with ointments, in the body, the bed of his own corruption.” Finally Diogenes the Cynic: “Beware,” he says, “lest the perfume of your head be the stench of your life.” Furthermore of cooks and bakers Clement of Alexandria discourses thus, book 3 of the Pedagogue chap. 7: “Nay they even effeminate the easy and ready food, namely bread, sifting out what is nourishing in the grain: so that what is necessary of food becomes a reproach of pleasure.” And after a few words: “Delicate gluttony,” he says, “has no limit. For it has advanced to cakes and sweet-cakes and dainties, inventing a multitude of afternoon snacks and dessert courses. But to me a man of this sort seems to be nothing else than a mouth and a belly.”
14. EUNUCHS.—Hear of these St. Basil, epist. 87: “That shameful kind of eunuchs,” he says, “and in every way pernicious, neither female nor male, raving against women, envious, of base price, effeminate with a fierce spirit, given to the belly, greedy of gold, savage, inconstant, illiberal, stable-keepers, insatiable, furious, and, what must be said further, condemned to the knife from their very birth.” And a little after, describing their feigned continence and open lasciviousness: “There,” he says, “they indeed remain chaste in vain through the knife; yet they rage without fruit because of their baseness.” Hence that saying of Claudian against Eutropius the Eunuch and Consul:
All monsters gave way when a Eunuch was Consul. And:
Thou canst endure the loom, not the weapon. And:
Who shall bear the sceptre of a eunuch?
19. BUT THE PEOPLE WOULD NOT HEAR THE VOICE OF SAMUEL.—This is a new sin of the people, of obstinacy; for which therefore they afterwards paid the penalty, says St. Gregory: “It was great rashness,” he says, “to ask a king against the will of God; great hardness, not to be able to be overcome by the counsels of the Prophet.” And a little after, speaking of this repeated petition for a king: “In this is the consummation of an evil purpose and the unconvertibility of the will.”
St. Gregory: “We speak in the ears of those with whom we have the grace of great familiarity: and holy men, because they are joined to almighty God in the bond of great love, also speak in his ears: because they ask his hearing of divine propitiation with the more confidence, the more loftily they have received the place of obtaining with his mercy.”
22. HEARKEN TO THEIR VOICE, AND MAKE THEM A KING,—But not such as they ask, and such as thou hast depicted to them, but such as I described in Deuteronomy 17, who shall rule faithful subjects politically, not despotically: and who shall study not his own advantages but those of the Commonwealth. For God so cuts away the unjust petition for a king that what is equitable in it he grants, what is unjust he denies, that is, does not grant it, but permits it to be done, and foretells that it will be.
St. Gregory asks, book 4 chap. 1, why God grants what is ill asked. I answer, because he is angry with the petitioner and wills to punish and chastise him by his own petition, as by a just and fitting vengeance. So also St. Augustine on Psalm 54 [?]: “The king,” he says, “was chosen by the Lord not to remain, but according to the hard and evil heart of the people was given for their correction, not for their advantage, according to that saying: because he made a hypocrite to reign on account of the perversity of the people,” Job 34:30. The same Augustine, book 5 Against Julian, chap. 9, calls Saul “the punishment of sinners.” And St. Cyprian, epist. 38 to Rogatian: “That the Lord might avenge this,” he says, “he raised up for them Saul as king, who afflicted them with grievous injuries, and through all insults and penalties trod down and pressed the proud people, that the despised priest might be avenged on the proud people by divine vengeance.”
Anastasius of Nicaea confirms this by two examples, Quest. 15 on Scripture. The first is of the Emperor and tyrant Phocas, who, when he oppressed the innocent, a certain pious man complaining to God: “Why, O Lord,” he said, “hast thou made him Emperor?” received from him this answer: “Because I found no worse.” The other of a certain monk, who, created bishop of a wicked city, growing insolent with this honor, was rebuked by an angel and heard: “Why art thou proud and pleasest thyself magnificently, O wretched man? Thou wast not created bishop because thou art worthy of the priesthood, but because such a city was worthy of such a bishop.” Finally hear St. Gregory: “The king asked is granted as a punishment; for it is a great punishment which proceeds from the severity of an inward judgment, when the reprobate mind is so cast away that it is permitted to do what it ill deliberates. Those, therefore, who were convicted of having rejected the Lord in asking a king, while it was permitted them to do that by which they should cast the Lord away from themselves, no graver penalty than this could have been inflicted on them here.”
AND MAKE THEM A KING.—Hence it is clear that Saul was elected king, and raised up, not by the Commonwealth nor by the nobles, but immediately by God through Samuel; and accordingly that he received the royal power not from the Commonwealth but immediately from God: (just as the Pontiff, although elected by the Cardinals, yet receives the power of the pontificate not from them nor from the Church, but immediately from Christ). Wherefore the Commonwealth could in no way deprive him of this power, but God alone; as in fact he himself deprived him of the kingdom and of life for disobedience, and put David in his place. The same I say of David. For he was made king not by the Commonwealth but by God through Samuel, and from him received all power of ruling. It is otherwise with the descendants of David. For these were made kings not by God but by the Commonwealth. For David, with the consent of the Commonwealth, chose from his sons one, namely Solomon, by the will of God as his successor in the kingdom, and appointed him king. Then Roboam succeeded Solomon as the firstborn; Abia him; Asa him, by the same right.