Letter XV. To Giovanni Battista Viola

Rome ( August, 1542?).

JHUS.

May the supreme grace and love of Christ Our Lord ever favour us continuously and help us.

I have received a letter from you and I do not understand it. In two places in that letter, speaking of obedience you say: first, that you are ready to obey my will; and secondly: “since I would much rather choose death than offer resistance to obedience, I submit to the judgment of Y.R.” By this you seem to mean that your obedience is blind. Now obedience is blind in two ways: first, it imposes upon the inferior the duty, where there is no question of sin, of submitting his understanding in the performance of all that he is ordered; second, it becomes no less the duty of the inferior, when the superior gives or has given some order, and he thinks there are reasons against or difficulties with regard to the thing that is ordered, to represent with humility to the superior the difficulties or reasons as they appear to him, without inducing him to one course of action more than another, with the intention of following afterwards with a quiet mind the course that shall be indicated to him or ordered.

Now with regard to your obedience I fail to understand it. For after you have in your opinion given many good reasons to persuade me of the advisability of having a new master, you say in another part of your letter: “I have thought it well to write this letter to Y.R., requesting that you will deign to give your opinion as to whether we are to change this master, or rather to lose time.,, You yourself can judge whether you are seeking to obey, and whether you are submitting your judgment to whatever opinion I may pronounce; for if you so abound in judgment of your own and are aware that you are losing your time, where is the submission you profess? Do you fancy for one moment that I am going to bid you lose your time? May F

God Our Lord never permit that where I cannot be of any use, I should be harmful to anyone.

You say in another place: “Really it grieves me very much to have wasted so much time during the last eight months under this master; still if it seems good to you that we should go on losing time we will continue.” When you left here I remember telling you that by the time you arrived in Paris the course of the Summulas would have been going on for two or three months, and I told you to study Latin for four or five months that you might be able to express yourselves sufficiently, and afterwards, during the remaining three or four months, to acquire the elements of the Summulas, so as to be able in the following year to begin the course of the Summulas with a good grounding. Now, in view of the fact that you have chosen to act more in accordance with your opinion than with mine, and to enter on a course which had begun two or three months before, judge for yourselves who is the cause of your waste of time.

I conclude, praying God Our Lord through His infinite and supreme Goodness to deigh to give us His abundant grace that we may perceive His most holy will and may accomplish it entirely.

From Rome.