On Commanding | Manicula

Autor(s)

Simone Sari

Robert D. Hughes

LII. On Commanding

1. God is a very great emperor,

who commands people, by virtue of <His> love,

to honour highly His great worth.

2. For this reason has God commanded

[all] people to be obedient

and to fear God.

3. God commands people to love Him more than anything else

so that their loving may be filled

with hope, charity and faith.

4. God commands people to be faithful

so that they may commit no evil,

for faithfulness renders people wealthy.

5. God commands people to be courteous,

humble, generous (lit. “free”),^[1] pleasant and wise,

so that they may not err in any respect.

6. God commands people to perform immediately

whatever good they can without sinning,

so that they may become obedient forthwith.

7. God has commanded will

to love performing virtuous (lit. “good”) acts with all its power

so that it may not be idle in any respect.

8. He who is obedient towards God

is caused by Him to abide freely

in eternal glory.

9. Whoever refuses to obey God

is endlessly enslaved by Him,

within a fire from which he shall not be able to emerge.

10. Christ commanded Saint Peter

to feed his lambs: (Jn 21:15)

whoever slays them is not obedient.

[1] The Catalan and Occitan word franc (Frankish *frank and Late Latin Francus, i.e the. name of the Frankish people) denotes an attribute which derives from the feudal terminology used to convey the nobility and generosity of the lover (e.g. the troubadour’s midons is often praised for being franca), cf. E. M. Ghil, “Imagery and Vocabulary”, in F. R. P. Akehurst & J. M. Davis, A Handbook of the Troubadours, UCP 1995, p. 443. The term also maintains the meaning of “free (or at liberty)/freed (or liberated)” (e.g. the English verb “affranchise”). In Llull’s writings, it is often linked with the concept of free will, to which he refers interchangeably as libre arbitre (“free will”) and franc arbitre (also “free will’). In Dante’s Rime (“Rhymes”) CXI (ll. 9-11), we likewise find “Però nel cerchio de la sua palestra / Liber arbitrio già mai non fu franco / sì che consiglio in van si balestra.” (“Thus in the round arena that contains / Love’s combat no free will was ever free, / so that good counsel shoots its darts in vain”, translation by A. Mortimer, Dante, Rime, 2009, p. 171).