Commentaria in Isaiam
Thus gluttony leads to atheism and to all crimes. The same was the sense, the same the saying of Sardanapalus, who as he was dying composed this epitaph: “Eat, drink, play: after death there is no pleasure.” Of him Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, book 5, says: “How can a life be pleasant from which prudence is absent, and moderation is absent?”
So Holofernes, drunk, was beheaded by Judith, Judith 13.
So to the rich glutton thirsting in the flames God granted not a drop of water, Luke 16.
When the Emperor Michael III was accustomed to gorge himself with wine, at the times when he was drunk he ordered many absurd things to be done; for some to have their ears cut off, others their noses, others their heads; which Basil forbade, fearing not so much for others as for himself. When therefore Michael saw Basil standing in his way, he devised such a plot against him: he commanded a certain man to throw a spear, as if at a wild beast, but in fact at Basil; and this was plainly done: for the man who was ordered to do it, when about to die, confessed the matter. He cast the spear, then, but missed, and Basil was saved.
Basil, having shared with others his plan of putting Michael to death, waited until Michael, again overcome with wine at supper, lay in a stupor, and was led to the king’s bedchamber, which is near the church of St. Mamas, and lay there oppressed with the deepest sleep; going out, he first broke the bars of the Emperor’s chamber, lest the doors be shut by the chamberlains, and then came in with the conspirators. When those who kept watch before the chamber (who were few) tried to bar the assassins’ entrance, and a tumult arose, the Emperor stretched out his hands, and one with a drawn sword cut off both of them, and having done so returned to the rest. But Michael, staggering with wine and unable to flee because of his drunkenness, lay miserably wailing: another of Basil’s men, seeing him still alive, leapt upon him and drove his sword into his breast, so that, his belly also being pierced, his soul slipped away. So Curopalates and Zonaras, and Baronius, volume 10, year 867.
Zeno, Emperor of the East, given to gluttony and drunkenness, was wont to be so affected in his mind that, when he had fallen, he differed in nothing from a dead man. Being hateful to his wife Ariadne, when thus drunk he was thrown by her as dead into the imperial tomb, a huge stone being set upon it as a lid; and becoming sober, amid laments and cries, he died there a wretched and horrible death, since Ariadne forbade anyone to open the tomb or draw him out. So Zonaras, volume 3 of the Annals.
The Emperor Phocas, when on the day on which the horse races were held he had exceeded measure in eating and drinking, was branded by the populace with insulting words of this kind: “Again from the caneon (a kind of cup, named from the sound it makes as the wine and air flow out together) you have drunk, again you have lost your mind.” For this taunt he put many to death. So when the nobles and magistrates of the republic saw a great multitude of men afflicted with many evils, goods taken by confiscation, heads cut off, they sent letters to Heraclius, governor of Africa; who, moved by their prayers, at once prepared a fleet and set out against Phocas, bringing with him that image of Christ which was not made by hands. Phocas being thus overcome, one Photinus, of the number of the nobles, against whose wife’s chastity Phocas had earlier plotted, suddenly burst into the palace and led Phocas the Emperor, clothed in no garment, to Heraclius, who addressed him with these words: “Is it thus, wretch, you have administered the republic?” Phocas answered: “For my part you may govern it better.” Thereupon his right hand and his feet were cut off, the skin torn from his back, his private parts cut off and fixed on a spear, and finally his head cut off with a sword; the rest of the trunk was dragged in disgrace through the filth in the forum called the Boarium, and at length given to the fire. So Michael Glycas, part 4 of the Byzantine Annals.
In the year of the Lord 912, the Emperor Alexander died on the sixth day of the month of June by an infamous end; of him John Curopalates says thus: Alexander, on the sixth of the month, having bathed and dined and being drunk with wine, went down after noon to play ball, and a pain arising in his bowels from the foods with which he had gorged himself and from drunkenness, he returned to the palace, and, much blood flowing from his nostrils and private parts, died the next day. So Baronius, volume 10.
Hear another memorable thing told by St. Jerome, epistle 3 to Vitalis: “A certain poor little woman,” he says, “while nursing an abandoned infant, chewing food for him and fulfilling a nurse’s office, and the little boy, who had now reached his tenth year, sleeping with her, it happened that, beyond what womanly modesty allows, she gorged herself with wine, and, inflamed with lust, led the child by obscene motions to intercourse. The first drunkenness became the habit of another night and of the nights thereafter. Two months were not yet passed, and behold the woman’s womb swelled. What more? By God’s dispensation it came about that she who against nature abused the simplicity of the child in contempt of God was betrayed by the Lord of nature, the word being fulfilled which says: There is nothing hid that shall not be revealed.”
Would you have recent examples of our own age? Horrible is what our Delrio relates, volume 2 of the Magical Disquisitions, book 3, part 1, question 7, of a certain monk in Flanders given to crapulence, who, when the banquet was ended and the others wished to give thanks to God, said that thanks should rather be given to the devil, and was seized by the devil, roasted alive, and reduced to ashes.
Similar is what Gabriel Pratcolus reports in his Chronicle, in the year of the Lord 1580, of a certain drinker of Nekerkov in Germany, who, murmuring against God and drinking to him, and saying: “To you, God, if you had made the wine better this year, you would have drunk better,” remained motionless; nor could he be drawn out or moved from his place by ropes or horses applied by the magistrate.
A third is recounted by Michael ab Isselt in the year of the Lord 1595, which happened at Bacharach, between Coblenz and Mainz. A certain drunkard called a demon upon the womb of his pregnant wife: she suddenly bore a monster. The drunkard returned home: soon the monster, leaping upon him like a falcon and hissing, entangled the man in its tail, stung him with venomous blows, and killed him.
15. Go in to him that dwelleth in the tabernacle.
The Hebrew is, go in to sochen, which some render apothecary, others treasurer. Our version renders it best: “him that dwelleth in the tabernacle”; for hence cities are called cities of tabernacles, Exodus 1:11; and the Septuagint render it: go into the pastophorium, that is, to the chamber or room near the temple in which the priests dwelt, who from it are called pastophori: for the word signifies either a chamber or the priestly mantle, as I said from St. Jerome and others at 3 Kings 6, at the end; for this Sobna was governor of the temple; he dwelt therefore in the tabernacle, that is, in the pastophorium of the temple.
Wherefore Adamus too freely and boldly here, as elsewhere, carps at our interpreter St. Jerome, saying: “St. Jerome does not consult the letter, but has introduced the sense which he presupposed.” For St. Jerome expressly says in his Commentary: “Sochen they interpret either as tabernacle or as pastophorion, that is, a chamber in which the governor of the temple dwells.” And he, like the Seventy, was most skilled in the Hebrew tongue.
To Sobna.—The Hebrews relate, says St. Jerome, that this Sobna was High Priest, who betrayed Jerusalem to the Assyrians and Sennacherib. But since this is Jewish tradition, and Scripture makes no mention of it, nay rather insinuates the contrary, saying that Sennacherib did not take Jerusalem so far that he did not even send an arrow into it, chapter 37, verse 33; hence this Sobna rather seems to have sinned by arrogance, and to have been a proud and swollen man, consulting his own advantages and trampling on the people, as is plain from the magnificent sepulchre which he had built for himself, and which Isaias here throws in his face.
Hence Isaias sets against him Eliakim, gentle and loving the people, and designates him as successor, who, he says, shall be as a father of the people. So St. Jerome.
Governor of the temple.—In the Hebrew, governor of the house, that is, of the temple; for this is by antonomasia called the house, because it is the house of God. So Forerius and others; hence he also dwelt near the temple in the pastophorium. Wherefore R. Abraham and Vatablus do not rightly render for governor of the temple, governor of the royal house. That this Sobna was a High Priest is plain from this place, and from verse 18 and following, either the highest, as St. Jerome and Sanchez will have, whom verse 21 favours, where it is said: “I will clothe him with thy robe, etc., and he shall be as a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem,” or at least one of the more dignified priests to whom the care of the temple and of the sacred treasury was committed. Hence the Septuagint and St. Cyril call this Sobna the quaestor, and others the treasurer; for that he was not the high priest seems to be urged from this, that he is called not Pontiff but governor of the temple, and because Josephus, Antiquities, book 10, chapter 11, where he gives the list of the high priests, does not name this Sobna. Again, because about this time another was Pontiff, namely Azarias, as is plain from 2 Paralipomenon 31:13. Add that the pontificate from the time of Aaron and Sadoc was not transferred to another family until the times of the Machabees. But here the office of Sobna is said to be transferred to Eliakim. Whether this Sobna is the same as Sobna the scribe, who was prefect of the court and steward of king Ezechias, of whom 4 Kings 18:18, so that the same man was prefect of the temple and of the court, is uncertain.