Commentaria in III Regum
25. DIVIDE (he said) THE LIVING CHILD IN TWO, AND GIVE HALF OF IT TO THE ONE, AND HALF OF IT TO THE OTHER.—Solomon said this not seriously, as passing sentence, but feignedly, to find in which of them maternal affection resided, so as to adjudge the living son to her: for no other proof or other means of deciding this dispute offered. For a hidden love and compassion towards her offspring is implanted in the mother by nature, of which she who is not the mother is devoid. Solomon here therefore questioned nature, and she answering showed the true mother by her affection. For, as St. Ambrose says, book 3 On the Holy Spirit, chapter 6: “Solomon considered that the true mother would care more for her son than for comfort, and would prefer grace to right, not right to grace. But she who had feigned the affection of a mother, blind in her eagerness to win, would think little of his destruction, in which she did not know the loss of piety. And so that spiritual man who judgeth all things (for the spiritual man judgeth all things) sought nature in the affections, which lay hid in the words, and questioned piety that it might betray truth. The mother therefore conquered by the affection of charity, which is the fruit of the spirit.”
You will say: an unjust fear of the dismemberment of her son was cast upon the true mother. I answer that this was necessary in this place and time for the good of the mother; namely that in this way she might be freed from a perpetual dispute with her rival, and from the constant danger of losing her son, which was a far greater evil to her. Wherefore it was better for her to suffer this fear for a short time, that by it she might be recognized as the mother, and her son be restored to her.
By a like device Emperors have tested and detected the truth and the true mother or father. For Claudius Caesar, says Suetonius in his Life, chapter 15, “compelled to confession a woman who did not acknowledge her own son, the proof being doubtful on both sides, by ordering her to marry the young man”; for when this was refused, which nature abhorred, she acknowledged her son. Claudius therefore compelled to the confession of the truth a mother who denied that a certain young man, who was truly her son, was her own son, by ordering a marriage between her and that young man. Charlemagne likewise, certain that either the father or the son, whom he held captive, had killed someone, but uncertain which of them had done it, ordered both to be hanged. But when the father, who had truly offended, saw no hope of redemption, he confessed and acknowledged his own guilt, and so freed his son from the impending punishment. So John Molanus, Doctor of Louvain, relates from the life of Charles, book 1 On Keeping Faith with Heretics, chapter 6, and Martin Delrio, volume 3 of the Magical Disquisitions, book 4, in the preamble, from Andrew Barbatia on the chapter Praesenti, on Proof.
Third, this judgment of Solomon was imitated by Alphonsus, king of Aragon, who, as Antonius Panormita writes in his Deeds, book 2, chapter 39, when a certain maidservant had conceived by her master and borne a son, and therefore by Spanish law claimed freedom, while the master, lest he be deprived of the mother together with the son, denied that the boy was born of himself, decreed that the infant be sold under the spear, and when the infant was about to be delivered to the one who had offered the highest price, the father, overcome by natural affection, could not restrain his tears, and confessed that the son was his. Wherefore the king forthwith adjudged both the son to the father and her due freedom to the mother.
To this belongs the judgment of Ariopharnes, king of Thrace, who, when three sons of the king of the Cimmerians were quarrelling over their father’s kingdom, ordered the father’s corpse to be taken out of the tomb and tied to a tree, and the sons to contend with the bow, so that he who should pierce the father’s heart should succeed him in the kingdom. The eldest pierced the throat, the second the breast; the third, younger but more pious, refused to shoot at his father’s heart, saying it was impious to pierce a father’s heart. So the Thracian adjudged the kingdom to him. This example is recounted by the Theatre of Human Life, volume 7, book 4, after the beginning, and cites Diodorus as author, book 20; but Diodorus has nothing of the kind beyond the names of Ariopharnes and the sons of the king of the Cimmerians; wherefore it seems to me suspect as to historical credit, and mythical.
26. AND THE WOMAN WHOSE CHILD WAS ALIVE SAID TO THE KING (FOR HER BOWELS WERE MOVED UPON HER CHILD): I BESEECH THEE, MY LORD, GIVE HER THE CHILD ALIVE, AND DO NOT KILL IT. BUT THE OTHER SAID: LET IT BE NEITHER MINE NOR THINE, BUT DIVIDE IT.—Hence it is plain that this woman was not only a false mother, but also labored with envy and hatred towards the true mother, and therefore asked that her son be killed, as her own was dead: otherwise she would have asked that the infant be kept for herself, when the true mother asked that he be given to her by the king, lest her son be killed. She wished, therefore, that her son should die, as her own son was dead. So Abulensis. Hear St. Ambrose, book 3 On Virginity: “Hearing which, she who was asking another’s child not only consented but even demanded the division of the little one, moved by no maternal affection. She who knew the infant to be her own, fearing not to be defeated but to be bereaved, and consulting now not her own comfort but her pledge, began to pray that the boy should rather be handed over safe to the other than be returned cut in pieces to his own mother.
Whence Solomon, who not by divine majesty but by arguments, as a man, questioned the inward affection, judged that the little one should rather be restored to her whom her own grief had betrayed as the true mother: but her whom the mercy for the dying child did not move he pronounced a stranger to nature, whom he saw to be a stranger to piety. The truth therefore was not hidden, yet through the pretence of the other it wavered; and even the good mother long hung in an ambiguous issue, while the judgment was in uncertain peril.” Tropologically St. Gregory, book 21 of the Morals, chapter 8, taking these two women for false and true teachers: “The perverse woman,” he says, “cries: Let it be neither mine nor his. For, as we have said, those whom they see not obeying them for temporal glory they envy that others should live by the truth. But the true mother is eager that her son be at least with the stranger, and live; because truthful masters allow that among their disciples some may have the praise of mastery, provided only that the disciples do not lose the integrity of life. By the bowels of piety this same true mother is recognized, because every mastery is approved in the test of charity: and she alone deserved to receive the whole who as it were yielded the whole, because faithful superiors, in that they not only do not envy others’ praise from their good disciples, but even pray for their advancement, themselves receive their sons whole and living, when in the supreme examination they obtain from their life the joys of perfect recompense.” In a similar way, but with dissimilar affection and unlike effect, the mother of the Caesars Antoninus Caracalla and Geta, says Herodian, in order to unite them who were discordant and dividing the empire, asked to be divided by them, that each of them might have a part of her in his kingdom. But in vain; for Caracalla, fearing his brother Geta, as beloved of the people, killed him in his mother’s bosom, and, to cover the crime with a veil of piety, enrolled him among the Gods, saying: “Let him not be alive, let him be a God.”
27. THE KING ANSWERED, AND SAID: GIVE THE LIVING CHILD TO THIS WOMAN, AND LET IT NOT BE KILLED: FOR SHE IS THE MOTHER THEREOF.—For nature and natural compassion certainly indicates that this is the mother. See here the skill and wisdom of Solomon. “And so not undeservedly,” says St. Ambrose, book 2 On Offices, chapter 7, “was the understanding of God judged to be in him in whom the hidden things of God are. And what is more hidden than the testimonies of the inward bowels, into which the understanding of the wise man descended as a kind of arbiter of piety, and drew out as it were a voice of the generative womb, by which was shown the maternal affection of her who had chosen that her son should live even with a stranger rather than be slain in his mother’s sight. It was therefore of wisdom to distinguish hidden consciences, to draw truth out of hidden things, and as with a sword, so with the sword of the spirit to penetrate not only the womb but the bowels of the soul and mind. It was also of justice, that she who had killed her own should not take away another’s, but the true mother should receive her own. Finally Scripture also pronounced this: All Israel heard the judgment which the king had judged; and they feared the face of the king, because the understanding of God was in him to do justice.”