What the saints say about prudence is initially disconcerting because the word has almost changed meaning. In ordinary usage, “being prudent” often means taking no risks, delaying, or remaining silent. In Catholic tradition, however, prudence is the opposite of timidity: it is the governing virtue, the one that makes us act well, intelligence attentive to reality and placed at the service of the good. It enabled the saints to dare at the right time and to withdraw at the right time—and this is why they spoke of it so often.
This anthology gathers their words: the inspired voice of Scripture, the definitions of the Fathers and Doctors, and the practical wisdom of spiritual masters and mystics. From Augustine to Thomas Aquinas, from the author of The Imitation to Catherine of Siena and Francis de Sales, one hears a striking unanimity: true prudence is neither cunning nor fear, but the art of discerning and accomplishing the real good, here and now.
This article gives priority to quotations: it is a collection of voices, not a manual. For a continuous account of the virtue’s nature, its three acts, its parts, and the concrete means of growing in it, see How to Grow in Prudence. For the sister virtue that watches over thoughts, see How to Grow in Spiritual Vigilance; for the art of receiving guidance, see How to Grow through Spiritual Direction.
The Voice of Scripture: The Wisdom of Walking Well
Before the saints, Scripture itself sings the praise of prudence. The wisdom books commend it on nearly every page, and Christ made it an explicit instruction to his disciples. Biblical prudence is never a calculation of self-interest: it is the knowledge of how to live well, the intelligence that sees where each path leads.
“The Prudent Man Looks Where He Is Going”
The verse chosen by the Catechism to illustrate prudence comes from Proverbs. It contrasts the credulous and hasty simpleton with the discerning person who watches where he places his feet:
“The naive believes everything he is told; the discerning man watches where he sets his feet.” — Book of Proverbs 14:15[1]
The image is one of walking: the moral life is not played out in good intentions taken as a whole, but in a succession of concrete steps. The same book warns against haste: “Without reflection, zeal is worth nothing; whoever hurries misses his goal” (Prov 19:2)[2]. And the Book of Wisdom places prudence at the heart of the quartet of virtues that Wisdom teaches the soul: “Would you become just? The labors of Wisdom produce the virtues: she teaches temperance and prudence, justice and fortitude […]” (Wis 8:7)[3]—the quartet of the virtues since called cardinal.
“Wise as Serpents and Innocent as Doves”
The best-known saying is Christ’s command as he sends his disciples into a hostile world. It joins two qualities often thought opposed:
“Behold, it is I who send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 10:16[4]
The serpent’s prudence—vigilance, awareness of danger, intelligence in concrete situations—is not condemned but commanded. Yet it never stands alone: the dove’s innocence prevents it from becoming deceit. The disciple must be both discerning and straightforward, lucid and transparent. This is the exact formula of Christian prudence: all the serpent’s intelligence, none of its venom.
Christ illustrates the same wisdom with very concrete parables: whoever would build a tower first sits down to count the cost (cf. Lk 14:28)[5]; a king going to war first evaluates his forces (Lk 14:31). To act well, one must first see well—weigh, foresee, and measure.
Two Forms of Prudence: Flesh and Spirit
Scripture also knows a false prudence, and Saint Paul names it without reserve. There is a practical intelligence wholly turned toward self, comfort, and earthly security—an ability that calculates everything except God:
“[…] the flesh tends toward death, but the Spirit tends toward life and peace. For the tendency of the flesh is hostile to God.” — Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans 8:6-7[6]
The prudentia carnis, or “prudence of the flesh,” is the genius of calculation placed at the service of covetousness. Conversely, Christ dares to present the resourcefulness of this world as an example—not for its goal but for its energy: “The sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light” (Lk 16:8)[7]. This is a formidable reproach and the saints turned it into a summons to holy daring. If so much ingenuity is spent on accumulating wealth, how can still more not be spent on the Kingdom? The whole spiritual tradition stands on this ridge: take the world’s intelligence without taking its idol.
The Voice of the Fathers and Doctors: Defining the Virtue
On this scriptural foundation, the Fathers and Doctors built a precise definition of prudence. Two names predominate: Saint Augustine, who roots it in love, and Saint Thomas Aquinas, who gives it the technical formula that became canonical.
Saint Augustine: Prudence as a Form of Love
Augustine refuses to separate the virtues from charity. For him, the four cardinal virtues are faces of the love of God, and prudence is the gaze that discerns:
“Prudence is love distinguishing with sagacity between what hinders it and what helps it on its way to God.” — Saint Augustine, The Morals of the Catholic Church, I, 15, 25[8]
The formula is decisive: prudence is not a cold decision-making technique, but the intelligence of a loving heart. We see rightly only what we love rightly. A heart twisted by avarice or pride will see accurately whatever serves its passion and falsely everything else; its “prudence” is merely corrupted skill. True prudence presupposes that the good is already loved—it is charity’s eye.
Saint Thomas Aquinas: “Right Reason in Action”
Saint Thomas devotes ten complete questions of the Summa Theologiae to prudence.[9] From Aristotle he receives the most concise definition, makes it his own, and the Catechism quotes it in turn:
“Prudence is right reason in action.” — Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 47, a. 2, quoted in the Catechism § 1806[10]
In Latin, recta ratio agibilium: right reason concerning things to be done. Every word matters. Prudence is a rule: it measures and orders. It is right: it does not settle for effectiveness but aims at the true good. It concerns action—free human conduct—not the production of an object. This is why Thomas says prudence perfects not the work but the agent: one may be an excellent craftsman and an imprudent person.
From this follows the thesis that seals the unity of moral life: no virtue can stand without prudence, because prudence finds, in each situation, the fitting mean in which virtue consists.
“There can be no moral virtue without prudence.” — Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 58, a. 4[11]
The Charioteer of the Virtues
The tradition’s favorite image for this governing role is the charioteer. It goes back to the Fathers and is fixed in the Catechism:
“It is called ‘auriga virtutum’: it guides the other virtues by setting rule and measure.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1806[12]
The charioteer does not pull the chariot; the horses do. But without him, the team bolts or overturns. Likewise fortitude confronts, justice renders what is due, and temperance restrains; prudence tells them when, how, and how far. Fortitude without prudence becomes rashness; generosity without prudence ruins itself; zeal without prudence wounds instead of saving. This is why tradition places prudence first among the cardinal virtues: it is the condition of all the others.
The Voice of Spiritual Masters: Prudence in the Interior Life
The Fathers defined the virtue; spiritual masters taught its interior practice. Under the name discretion—meaning discernment rather than reserve—a term inherited from the Desert Fathers and transmitted throughout the Middle Ages, prudence became the art of guiding a soul: weighing movements, seeking counsel, keeping due measure, and not trusting oneself.
The Desert Fathers: Discernment as “Mother of All Virtues”
Long before the medieval masters, desert monasticism made discernment (Greek diakrisis, Latin discretio) the queen of spiritual life. Saint John Cassian, who transmitted the wisdom of the Egyptian Fathers to the West, devotes his entire Second Conference to it. Through Abba Moses he reports the teaching received from the great Saint Anthony:
“Discernment is the begetter, guardian, and moderator of all the virtues.” — Saint John Cassian, Conferences, II, 4, reporting the teaching of Saint Anthony the Great[13]
The claim is radical. Before the assembled elders, Anthony dares to say that discernment is worth more than fasting, vigils, and austerities, because all these practices can mislead without it. Excessive fasting ruins the soul as surely as gluttony; zeal without measure breaks the person it should save. Discernment is “the eye and lamp of the body” (cf. Mt 6:22): it holds the helm between the opposite reefs of excess and laxity. Here already lies all that Bernard would say of the moderator of the virtues and Catherine of discretion: both word and doctrine come to them from the desert.
The Imitation of Christ: “Do Not Believe Every Word”
The Imitation of Christ—which the historian Yann Sordet describes as one of the greatest bookselling successes of modern Europe, commonly presented as the most printed book after the Bible[14]—devotes an entire chapter to prudence, entitled Prudence in Our Undertakings. It gives the golden rule: receive nothing lightly, but weigh everything before God.
“We must not trust every word of others or every feeling within ourselves, but cautiously and patiently try the matter according to God.” — The Imitation of Christ, book I, ch. 4[15]
The author continues with the two classic traps—haste and obstinacy—and gives the remedy found in all the saints: seek advice rather than follow one’s judgment alone.
“It is great wisdom not to be rash in our doings, nor to maintain too obstinately our own opinions. […] Consult a wise and conscientious man. Seek the advice of your betters in preference to following your own inclinations.” — The Imitation of Christ, book I, ch. 4[16]
Elsewhere the same book identifies a very high form of prudence: knowing how to remain silent and turn toward God when judged unjustly, without being troubled by human opinion—“it is no small prudence to be silent in an evil time […]”.[17]
Saint Catherine of Siena: Discernment, Daughter of Humility
In The Dialogue, the eternal Father teaches Catherine that true spiritual prudence—which she calls discretion—is not mere skill: it is born from knowledge of self and God, hence from humility.
“Discretion is nothing other than the true knowledge the soul must have of itself and of Me. It is in this knowledge that it takes root.” — Saint Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, Treatise on Discretion[18]
Catherine draws from this a genealogy of the virtues: discretion is “planted in the soil of humility,” a shoot “grafted onto charity and united with it,” and it moves the soul “to render to each what is due”—glory to God, the truth of its own nothingness to itself, and service to one’s neighbor.[19] Without humility prudence decays into pride: the soul attributes God’s gifts to itself, judges its neighbor, and murmurs against Providence. With humility, all the soul does for its neighbor is done with discretion and charity, these two virtues being inseparable.
Saint Bernard: Discernment, Moderator of the Virtues
Long before Catherine, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux made discretio the condition of every lasting virtue. Without this interior measure, even sincere fervor turns against itself: fasting ruins the body, zeal wounds one’s neighbor, and austerity breeds pride.
“Discernment is therefore not so much a particular virtue as the guide and moderator of all the virtues, ordering the affections and governing the whole conduct of life. Without it virtue degenerates into vice […]” — Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs, sermon 49, § 5[20]
This is the most useful warning for generous souls: prudence is not the enemy of fervor but its guardian. Imprudent devotion—excessive penances, hasty decisions, disproportionate commitments—may collapse, dragging down in its fall the soul it was meant to raise. Measure is not lukewarmness; it is what enables perseverance.
Saint Francis de Sales: Against “Worldly Prudence”
No Doctor distinguished true prudence from its counterfeit more clearly than Saint Francis de Sales. In the Introduction to the Devout Life, he directly opposes the upright simplicity of God’s children to the crooked calculations of the age:
“There is no skill so good and desirable as simplicity. Worldly prudence and carnal artifices belong to the children of this age; but the children of God walk without detour, and their hearts have no folds.” — Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, part III, ch. 30[21]
True prudence is therefore not self-protective duplicity but enlightened simplicity: transparent in intention and discerning in means. Francis nevertheless recalls that uprightness does not dispense one from guidance—quite the opposite. Echoing Proverbs, he urges Philothea “not to lean on our own prudence,” but on that of the directors God has given us.[22] Once again, true prudence begins with the humility of taking counsel.
The Counterfeits Denounced by the Saints
The saints speak so often about prudence partly to defend it from its imitations. The virtue stands between two abysses: imprudence, which acts without seeing, and an apparent excess, false prudence, which sees very well—but for bad ends, or sees only in order never to act.
False Prudence: Clear Sight in the Service of Evil
The first counterfeit is the prudence of the flesh already denounced by Saint Paul. Saint Thomas classifies the vices opposed to prudence by false resemblance by carefully distinguishing end and means: prudence of the flesh, which aims at a merely apparent end; cunning (astutia), which employs counterfeit means—even for an end that would be good in itself; then their execution: deceit (dolus, by words or deeds) and fraud (fraus, properly by deeds), not to mention consuming anxiety over temporal things.[23] These are genuine practical intelligences—often brilliant; it is their end or their means that are perverse. Hence the saints’ constant severity: skill placed at the service of covetousness is not half a virtue but a vice in disguise.
Pusillanimity Disguised as Wisdom
The second counterfeit is the inverse and more insidious because it assumes the virtue’s name. It is fear that dares nothing and calls itself “prudence” to justify itself. The saints unmask it without pity: what the Gospel condemns in the servant who buries his talent out of fear (Mt 25:25) is precisely this paralyzing false prudence. True prudence is positive: it does not first say “do nothing,” but “this is what must be done.” It made the saints daring. A “prudence” that led only to abstention would betray its name.
“More Shrewd than the Sons of Light”: The Call to Holy Daring
From these two counterfeits the saints draw one appeal, founded on the parable of the shrewd steward (Lk 16:8). The ingenuity people devote to temporal affairs becomes a reproach when it is absent from eternal affairs. Christ does not praise the steward’s goal—he is dishonest—but his resourcefulness and decisiveness. Spiritual masters turn this into a provocation: place at God’s service at least as much intelligence, foresight, and energy as people ordinarily devote to earthly success. The prudence of the saints is never inertia; it is the liveliest intelligence turned toward the only good that endures.
Prudence and the Gift of Counsel
For the saints, prudence does not remain on the level of human effort. Sustained by grace, it is perfected by a gift of the Holy Spirit. The gift of Counsel neither replaces the virtue nor transforms it into something else: it perfects it by making the soul docile to a higher light that illuminates the heart at the needed moment.[24]
Taking Counsel: The Humility of True Prudence
All the voices gathered here converge on one point: prudence begins by renouncing self-sufficiency. The Imitation says it (“consult a wise man”), Francis de Sales repeats it (“do not lean on your own prudence”), Catherine roots it in humility, and Proverbs had promised: “Without skill in governing, a people falls; an enlarged council will save it” (Prov 11:14).[25] Prudence is not the pride of the person who knows; it is the humility of the person who consults—conscience, experience, the Church, and a spiritual guide. On this art of receiving guidance, see How to Grow through Spiritual Direction.
The Gift of Counsel, Perfection of Prudence
At the summit, the Holy Spirit gives what virtue alone cannot attain: rightness of judgment even in singular cases where deliberating reason would hesitate or prove powerless. The Catechism lists Counsel among the seven gifts, and tradition sees in it, with Saint Thomas, the perfection of prudence[26]:
“The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1831[27]
Through this gift, the docile Christian is led to judge rightly what should be done (Saint Thomas, II-II, q. 52, a. 2, paraphrased here) without always laborious reasoning. The Spirit supplies, urges, or restrains, as he moved the saints to speak or remain silent, to dare or wait. The highest prudence is then no longer human calculation but listening: the dove grafted onto the serpent’s prudence required by Christ (Mt 10:16).
Summary Anthology
The following table gathers the principal sayings in this dossier, from Scripture to the Doctors and spiritual masters. Quotation marks indicate exact quotations, cuts being marked […]; see the notes for the translations used.
| Witness | Saying on Prudence | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Scripture | “The discerning man watches where he sets his feet.” | Proverbs 14:15 |
| Christ | “Be therefore wise as serpents, and innocent as doves.” | Matthew 10:16 |
| Saint Paul | “[…] the flesh tends toward death […]” (prudence of the flesh) | Romans 8:6 |
| Saint Augustine | “Prudence is love distinguishing…” | Morals of the Catholic Church, I, 15, 25 |
| Saint Thomas Aquinas | “Right reason in action”; “There can be no moral virtue without prudence.” | Summa, II-II q. 47; I-II q. 58 |
| Catechism | “It is called ‘auriga virtutum’ […]” (“the charioteer of the virtues”) | CCC § 1806 |
| Saint John Cassian | “Discernment is the begetter, guardian, and moderator of all virtues.” | Conferences, II, 4 |
| Imitation | “We must not believe every word […] but weigh everything according to God […]” | Imitation, I, 4 |
| Saint Catherine of Siena | “Discretion is nothing other than the true knowledge the soul must have of itself and of Me.” | The Dialogue |
| Saint Bernard | “Discernment… guide and moderator of all the virtues; without it virtue degenerates into vice.” | Sermons on the Song, sermon 49, § 5 |
| Saint Francis de Sales | “Worldly prudence and carnal artifices belong to the children of this age.” | Devout Life, III, 30 |
What the Voice of the Saints Ultimately Says
Across these varied voices—an African Father, a desert monk, a scholastic Doctor, a fifteenth-century canon, a Sienese mystic, and a bishop of Geneva—one doctrine rises with remarkable unity.
Prudence is not fear but the art of acting well. It is not cunning but the intelligence of an upright heart, “love distinguishing” (Augustine). It does not hover in principles but bends over the concrete step as “right reason in action” (Thomas). It begins in the humility of taking counsel and not trusting oneself (Imitation, Francis de Sales). It is rooted in knowledge of self before God (Catherine). It guards every other virtue from turning into vice (Bernard) and directs them as a charioteer directs his team (Catechism). Sustained by grace, it ends in docility to the gift of Counsel.
Thus the saints correct the opening prejudice: to grow in prudence is not to become timid but free—lucid enough to see the true good, humble enough to seek counsel, and strong enough to accomplish it. Prudence is the intelligence of holiness in action.
Further Reading
- How to Grow in Prudence — the practical account: the nature of the virtue, its three acts, its parts, and concrete means of growth.
- How to Grow through Spiritual Direction — the art of taking counsel, at the heart of all prudence.
- How to Grow in Spiritual Vigilance — custody of the heart, the sister virtue that watches over thoughts.
- How to Grow in Justice, How to Grow in Temperance, and How to Grow in Fortitude — the three other cardinal virtues governed by prudence.
- How to Grow in Humility — the root of true discretion according to Saint Catherine of Siena.
Notes and References
Book of Proverbs 14:15, official French liturgical translation (AELF): “The naive believes everything he is told; the discerning man watches where he sets his feet.” A verse used by the Catechism of the Catholic Church (§ 1806), which quotes it in the form “The discerning man watches his steps.” The Vulgate reads: “Astutus considerat gressus suos.”
1Book of Proverbs 19:2, official French liturgical translation (AELF): “Without reflection, zeal is worth nothing; whoever hurries misses his goal.”—a warning against haste, a vice opposed to prudent deliberation.
2Book of Wisdom 8:7, official French liturgical translation (AELF): “Would you become just? The labors of Wisdom produce the virtues: she teaches temperance and prudence, justice and fortitude […].” The book here enumerates the quartet of virtues (temperance, prudence, justice, fortitude) since called “cardinal” (from Latin cardo, hinge). A Greek book of the Old Testament; according to the USCCB introduction, its unknown author was probably a member of the Jewish community of Alexandria, about fifty years before Christ.
3Gospel according to Saint Matthew 10:16, mission discourse. The Vulgate reads: “Estote ergo prudentes sicut serpentes, et simplices sicut columbae.” Prudence is commanded and tempered by simplicity.
4Gospel according to Saint Luke 14:28-32, official French liturgical translation (AELF). Paired parables of the tower to be built and the king going to war: “Which of you, wanting to build a tower, does not first sit down to count the cost […]?”—a question illustrating prudent deliberation, summarized without quotation marks in the body.
5Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans 8:6-7, official French liturgical translation (AELF): “[…] the flesh tends toward death, but the Spirit tends toward life and peace. For the tendency of the flesh is hostile to God.” Biblical source of the notion prudentia carnis, the “prudence of the flesh,” classified by Saint Thomas among the vices opposed to prudence (Summa, II-II, q. 55, a. 1-2).
6Gospel according to Saint Luke 16:8. The master praises the steward’s shrewdness, not his dishonesty; the verse is traditionally read as a call to holy resourcefulness.
7Saint Augustine (354-430), De moribus Ecclesiæ catholicæ, book I, ch. 15, § 25. Augustine there defines the four cardinal virtues as so many forms of the love of God. Latin: “Prudentia est amor ea quibus adiuvatur ab eis quibus impeditur sagaciter seligens.” A work of his youth (388), written at Rome against the Manichaeans. French quoted: working translation from the Latin.
8Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Summa Theologiae, Secunda Secundæ (II-II), questions 47-56, devoted to prudence: its nature, parts, corresponding gift, and opposing vices. Reference edition in the source: Thomas Deman, Éditions de la Revue des Jeunes / Cerf.
9Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 47, a. 2 and a. 8: “recta ratio agibilium,” right reason concerning things to be done, as distinguished from art, recta ratio factibilium. The formula comes from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics VI and is quoted in CCC § 1806: “prudence is right reason in action”—this is the wording of the CCC reproduced here.
10Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 58, a. 4: no moral virtue can be had without prudence, for moral virtue chooses the just mean according to right reason, and it is prudence that determines it. French quoted: working translation from the Latin.
11Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1806, on prudence—the first listed of the cardinal virtues—“right reason in action” (quoting Saint Thomas, II-II, q. 47, a. 2) and “auriga virtutum” (“charioteer of the virtues”). Official French edition, Mame/Plon, 1992.
12Saint John Cassian (c. 360-c. 435), Conferences, Second Conference with Abba Moses, ch. 4: discretion (discretio; Greek diakrisis) is there named “omnium namque virtutum generatrix, custos moderatrixque discretio”—the begetter, guardian, and moderator of all the virtues. In ch. 2 Moses reports Saint Anthony’s teaching on the excellence of discernment, judged superior to fasting and vigils, because these practices, without discretion, can lead astray. Reference edition: Sources Chrétiennes no. 42, Jean Cassien, Conférences, vol. I, ed. E. Pichery, Cerf. French quoted: working translation from the Latin. A founding text of the monastic tradition on discretio, the acknowledged source of the vocabulary of “discretion” in Saint Bernard and Saint Catherine of Siena.
13The Imitation of Christ, book I, ch. 4, Prudence in Our Undertakings (De prudentia in agendis). Anonymous early fifteenth-century spiritual treatise traditionally attributed to Thomas à Kempis (canon of Windesheim, c. 1380-1471). Opening text of the chapter. French quoted: working translation (after Lamennais’s 1824 translation, not collated with the exemplar). On its circulation: Yann Sordet, Un succès de librairie européen: l’Imitatio Christi (1470-1850), Bibliothèque Mazarine/Éditions des cendres, 2012, p. 11—“one of the greatest bookselling successes Europe has known,” hence the common presentation as the most printed book after the Bible.
14 15The Imitation of Christ, book I, ch. 4 (continued). The chapter prescribes not acting hastily, not clinging to one’s own judgment, and taking counsel from a wise man—classic rules of Christian prudence. French quoted: working translation (after Lamennais’s 1824 translation, not collated with the exemplar).
16The Imitation of Christ, book III, ch. 28, “On Disregarding Human Judgments”: “It is no small prudence to know how to remain silent in an evil time and to turn inwardly toward me, without being troubled by human judgments.” French quoted: working translation (after Lamennais’s 1824 translation, not collated with the exemplar).
17Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), The Dialogue, Treatise on Discretion, ch. IX. Here “discretion” means, in medieval theological language, the discernment governing the measure of every virtue (cf. the editor’s note referring to Cassian’s Conferences). A work dictated in ecstasy c. 1378; Doctor of the Church since 1970. French quoted: J. Hurtaud’s translation (1913), verified on Wikisource. In the Dialogue it is the eternal Father who speaks to Catherine: cf. Paul VI, apostolic letter Mirabilis in Ecclesia Deus (4 October 1970), § 3, where the soul puts its questions to God and the heavenly Father unfolds before Catherine the things of the supernatural life.
18Saint Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, Treatise on Discretion, ch. IX-X (trans. J. Hurtaud, 1913, verified on Wikisource): discretion is “planted in the soil of humility,” a shoot “grafted onto charity and united with it,” and moves the soul “to render to each what is due”—glory to God, the truth of its own nothingness to itself, and service to one’s neighbor.
19Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), Sermons on the Song of Songs, sermon XLIX, § 5, commenting on Sg 2:4 (“Ordinavit in me caritatem”—“He set charity in order in me”): discernment (discretio) is there defined as “the guide and moderator of all the virtues,” and “without it virtue degenerates into vice” (trans. Abbé Charpentier, Œuvres complètes de saint Bernard). Reference Latin edition: S. Bernardi Opera, ed. J. Leclercq, C. H. Talbot and H. M. Rochais, Rome, Cistercian Edition, vol. II, Sermones in Cantica (Sermo XLIX).
20Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622), Introduction to the Devout Life (1609), part III, ch. 30, “Some Further Counsels Concerning Speech”: “There is no skill so good and desirable as simplicity. Worldly prudence and carnal artifices belong to the children of this age; but the children of God walk without detour, and their hearts have no folds.” The author’s own French, spelling modernized.
21Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, part III, ch. 2 (“Continuation of the Same Discourse on the Choice of Virtues”): following “the counsel of the Wise Man” (cf. Prov 3:5: “do not lean on your own understanding,” AELF), he urges Philothea “not to lean on our own prudence,” but “on that of those whom God has given us as guides.”
22Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 55: prudence of the flesh (a. 1-2, aiming at a merely apparent good end); cunning, astutia (a. 3, counterfeit means employed for a good or bad end); deceit, dolus (a. 4, execution of cunning by words or deeds); fraud, fraus (a. 5, execution properly by deeds); then excessive anxiety over temporal goods (a. 6-8).
23Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1831 (exact text quoted in the body): this is the magisterial enumeration of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (Is 11:1-2). The correspondence between the gift of Counsel and the virtue of prudence is Saint Thomas’s explanation, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 52, a. 2—the gift perfects the virtue without transforming it (cf. I-II, q. 68, a. 1). The body’s wording “led to judge rightly what should be done” is a paraphrase of this article, not a verbatim quotation. Official French edition, Mame/Plon, 1992.
24 26 27Book of Proverbs 11:14, official French liturgical translation (AELF): “Without skill in governing, a people falls; an enlarged council will save it.” Scriptural foundation of the humility of taking counsel, proper to the virtue of prudence (cf. Prov 15:22; 24:6).
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