Antonio de Guevara: "Let Them Descend into Hell Alive"

 Introduction

Antonio de Guevara (1481-1545) was born in Treceño, Cantabria, to a noble family.  Thanks to the influence of his uncle, he was educated in the royal court of Castille, where--so he claimed--he served as page to Queen Isabella I (r. 1474-1504), la Reina Católica.  Following her death, he entered the Franciscan Order, in 1505.  After some official roles in the order, he returned to court, becoming court preacher to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V (1500-1558), also known as Charles I of Spain, in 1521.  He served the emperor in many capacities, including becoming his chronicler beginning in 1527.  In 1528, he was named Bishop of Guadix, and then Bishop of Mondoñedo in 1537.  He died in his diocese in 1545 and was buried in the cathedral of Mondoñedo.

De Guevara was a prolific writer, especially during his time in court.  Many of his books were about the courtly life, with his famous being the Dial of Princes (Reloj de príncipes) (1529), an expanded version of the previous year's Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius.  (His interest in Roman history also involved his own book of A Decade of Caesars (1539), inspired by Suetonius, detailing the lives of the Roman Emperors surrounding Marcus Aurelius.)  Near the end of his life, though, he turned his pen towards religious writing as well, including a two-part work entitled Mount Calvary.  The letter translated below comes from his 1539 collection of Familiar Letters (Epistolas familiares).

 

 Letter for the Guardian of Alcalà, in which is expounded that verse of the Psalm which says, Descendant in infernum viventes (Ps 55:15)

 

Brother Antonio de Guevara, preacher and chronicler of Caesar, sends many greetings to his beloved father , the Guardian of Alcalà, Although I have not thus far written to your fatherhood, ¹my debt and affection to you were not less. But the cause of my taciturnity, your singular prudence assuredly knows by itself. We have received your letters, which were to our delight and pleasure, for there is no other man whose writings we have more freely read than yours; for in them there is both ornament of speech and garnishment of due salt. We delight to wish you well, certainly, and that you always be so. And thus far about these things.²

During the General Chapter,³ all of our order being present, I preached, and, among other authorities of the Sacred Scripture, I expounded that sentence of the Psalmist, which says, Descendant in infernum viventes [Let them descend into hell alive] (Ps 55:15). Your fatherhood now says, then, that he⁴ begs me to consider it good, since he did not hear it then, to recount to him what I said there.

The preacher who gives as written what he said on the pulpit is so obliged that he is obligated to lose his good credit, because, in the mouth of a great preacher, what the Spirit gives him to say is more to be seen than all that he tells us himself. Aeschines the philosopher, being in Rhodes, having been exiled by the Athenians, as the oration which Demosthenes made and wrote against the Palace,⁵ said to them, “Did you see that beast of Demosthenes blazoning his words, and the spirit he had in saying them?” Among the thirty most famous tyrants who destroyed the republic of Athens, one of them was Philostratus, in whose time the Philosopher Damonidas flourished, a man certainly very correct in his living, and most eloquent in speaking. Of this philosopher Damonidas, the tyrant Pisistratus said one day to those of the Senate of Athens: “All those in Athens and Greece may freely come to negotiate with me, and say what they wish, except the philosopher Damonidas, who may write to me, but not come speak with me, because he has a rare efficacy in what he says, which persuades me to accept whatever he wants.” King Philip, who was the father of Alexander the Great, laying siege to a city in Greece, came to an agreement with those within that, if they let the philosopher Teomastes enter in to speak certain words to them, he would leave, and the siege would be lifted. The philosopher Teomastes had great eloquence in what he said, and very great persuasion to what he willed, and it is so recounted here that, when he entered into the city alone and spoke in the Senate, they not only surrendered and opened the gates, but they kissed the hands of King Philip as king, in such a way that that philosopher was more powerful with words than King Philip was with arms. I say this, reverend father, because it matters greatly, and very greatly, to hear a thing said rather than to read it, and to read it rather than to hear it, as the Apostle says: Littera occidit, spiritus autem vivificat [The letter slays, but the spirit gives life] (2 Cor 3:6). The authority of the prophet is certainly there when written, as it was when preached, but I am letting you know that it is despirited and unsaucy.⁶

Coming, then, to the matter of what the Prophet says, to wit, Descendant in infernum viventes [Let them descend into hell alive] (Ps 55:15), there is a doubt as to how this could happen, that they would descend into hell, being alive, and, being alive, how they could be in hell. Saying, as the Prophet says in another Psalm, Non mortui laudabunt te Domine, nec omnes qui descendant inferni [The dead will not praise You, Lord, nor all who descend into hell] (Ps 115:17), if those who go into hell will not praise God there, but rather will blaspheme, why does the Prophet command us to descend there? To say that Orestes entered hell as prey of the nymphs, and that Aeneas descended there to seek his father, and that the musician Orpheus took his wife from there, and the valiant Hercules shattered its gates, and the Giant Etna tied up the jailer—but these are poetic fictions, which are not true, because the unfortunate one who one time spends the night in hell will forever stay buried there. He who dawns in glory will never more see the light, and he who spend the night in hell will never more see day, because the elect have day without night there, and the damned will have night without day. Being who we ought to be, we can avoid the path to hell, but, after we enter there, it is not in our hand to leave, because there is nothing more in harmony with reason than that he who comes to fault by his own will does not suffer the punishment against his will.

For the Prophet to say, then, Descendant in infernum viventes, seems to me that—I dare to say—his end was to persuade us and to admonish us, quod descendamus in infernum viventes, ut non descendamus postea morientes [that we should descend into hell alive, that we would not descend later, dead]. Let us descend to hell now through contemplation, so that we will not descend later through eternal damnation; let us descend to it through fear, so that we will not be carried off to it through rigor; let us descend to it by steps, so that we will not later be carried off to it by force; let us descend by day, so that we will not be carried off by night; let us descend alone, so that we will not later be compelled to go with many; let us descend for a time before we cannot return, so that we won’t be carried off to be left there. Finally, I say that it is a very holy thing to descend into hell in life, so that we do not descend, later, in death.

They descend into hell every day who think of the grave punishments that are given there for sin, because there is no such saffron poultice to separate us from sin as always bringing that punishment to our memory. Oh, how holy a thing it is to go on pilgrimage to Rome, to Santiago, to Jerusalem, and to the other holy places! And no less holy is it to descend to hell to see the punishments of the damned, because, if seeing the bodies of the Saints invites me to be virtuous, certainly the punishments of the damned will draw us back from vices. A pilgrim wants to go to Montserrat, to go gain the indulgence of Santiago, to make vows to our Lady of Guadalupe, to see San Lazaro in Sevilla, to give alms at the Holy House, to say novenas at the Crucifix of Burgos,⁷ and to offer his estate to San Anton in Castro, but I want no other station but that of hell. He who takes a trip to hell every day does not understand little, nor concern himself with little, nor wander a little, nor take on a little, nor even do a little pilgrimage. The Hebrews visited their temple once a year, the Samnites celebrated their Lustrums every five years, the Greeks celebrated their Olympics every four years, the Egyptians renovated the temple of Isis every seven years, the Romans sent presents to the Oracle of Delphi every ten years, but he who is a faithful and true Christian should come and go from hell, not from time to time, but rather every hour and every moment, so that he would have perpetual memory of perpetual punishment. In pilgrimages to the Holy House, there is cost, there is labor, and there is even danger, but those who visit hell in thought every day neither have cost nor expend labor nor run risk, because it is a pilgrimage that is taken with dry foot and is visited with firm foot.⁸

Oh, blessed is the soul who each day takes a trip through the stations of hell, in which he contemplates how beaten down the proud are there, how castigated are the envious, how hungry are the gluttonous, how meek are the wrathful, how consumed are the carnal: Descendant ergo in infernum viventes [Therefore, let them descend into hell alive]. Weakness cannot excuse one from walking this so holy journey, nor poverty impede, because He neither commands us to fatigue our persons nor spend our estates, but rather that we guard our money and employ our thoughts in this: Ergo descendant infernum viventes. It doesn’t seem to me that he has a bad altarpiece,⁹ he who has a painted hell in his oratory, because there are many more who abstain from sinning for fear of the punishment than from love of the glory. This, then, is what I feel about that saying of the Psalmist, about which he pleads to the King of Heaven; for just as my pen writes, so my soul always ruminates, for, as the Apostle said: Non auditores sed factores justificabuntur [Not hearers, but doers ,will be justified] (1 Cor 2:13).

Vale, iterum, vale [Farewell, again, farewell].

From Madrid, on the eighth of January of 1524.

 

1An honorific term of address, such as “Your Majesty.”

2This opening, italicized passage was in Latin in the original, while the remainder of the letter is in Spanish, besides the occasional phrase and quotation.

3De Guevara attended the Franciscan General Chapter in Burgos in May 1523, the year before this letter is dated.

4Grammatically, the honorific “Your Fatherhood” is in the third-person singular.

5Aula typically means “hall” or “classroom,” but it can also mean “palace.” The orations in which Demosthenes (384-322 BC) mentioned Aeschines (389-314 BC) are usually titled, in English, “On the False Embassy.”

6The word here is insalsugena, which seems to appear nowhere else but in this letter (a hapax legomena, “said once-and-only”). My conjectural understanding is that the word is formed from in- (“not”), salsa (“sauce”), and -gena (“produces”), combined to mean “which does not produce sauce.” Salsa can also mean, more generally, “something that animates or delights” (DRAE).

7All of these are popular pilgrimage spots in Spain, most along El Camino (“The Way”), the famous pilgrimage route to the shrine of Santiago (St. James) in Compostela. Montserrat and Guadalupe were both famous for their Black Madonnas; San Lazaro in Sevilla and San Anton in Castro (a.k.a. Castrojeriz) were hospitals, the latter named after the Antonians who ran it; Burgos has a renowned Gothic cathedral. The ”Holy House” (“Casa Santa”) might refer to the Basilica della Santa Casa in Loreto, Italy, where the house of Mary is believed to have been carried by angels; perhaps a different “Holy House” along El Camino—maybe another hospital—is being referred to instead.

8“With dry foot” (a pie enjuto) is an idiom meaning “without danger”; “firm foot” (a pie quedo), or “remaining foot,” means “without moving.”

9Literally, a retablo, which can refer to a large painting behind an altar, or to a smaller devotional picture.

 

Source: Epistolas familiares de Don Antonio de Guevara...Primera y segunda parte (Madrid: Matheo de Espinosa y Arteaga, 1668), 94-98.

Translation ©2023 Brandon P. Otto.  Licensed via CC BY-NC.  Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long as credit is given to the translator.