Chapter XI: Mental Aspects of the Eleventh Century: Italy (2)

“I would not have it hid from thee, my sweetest father and lord in
Christ, that my mind is cast down with sadness while it contemplates
its own exit which is so near. For I count now many long years that I
wait to be thrown to dogs; and I notice that in whatever monastery I
come nearly all are younger than myself. When I consider this, I
ponder upon death alone, I meditate upon my tomb; I do not withdraw
the eyes of my mind from my tomb. Nor is my mind content to limit its
fear and its consideration to the death of the body; for it is at once
haled to judgment, and meditates with terror upon what might be its
plea and defence. Wretched me! with what fountains of tears must I
lament! I who have done every evil, and through my long life have
fulfilled scarce one commandment of the divine law. For what evil have
not I, miserable man, committed? Where are the vices, where are the
crimes in which I am not implicated; I confess my life has fallen in a
lake of misery; my soul is taken in its iniquities. Pride, lust,
anger, impatience, malice, envy, gluttony, drunkenness, concupiscence,
robbery, lying, perjury, idle talking, scurrility, ignorance,
negligence, and other pests have overthrown me, and all the vices like
ravening beasts have devoured my soul. My heart and my lips are
defiled. I am contaminate in sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch.
And in every way, in cogitation, in speech or action, I am lost. All
these evils have I done; and alas! alas! I have brought forth no fruit
meet for repentance.

“One pernicious fault, among others, I acknowledge: scurrility has
been my besetting sin; it has never really left me. For howsoever I
have fought against this monster, and broken its wicked teeth with the
hammer of austerity, and at times repelled it, I have never won the
full victory. When, in the ways of spiritual gladness, I wish to show
myself cheerful to the brethren, I drop into words of vanity; and when
as it were discreetly for the sake of brotherly love, I think to throw
off my severity, then indiscreetly my tongue unbridled utters
foolishness. If the Lord said: ‘Blessed are they that mourn, for they
shall be comforted,’ what judgment hangs over those who not only are
slack at weeping, but act like buffoons with laughter and vain
giggling. Consolation is due to those who weep, not to those who
rejoice; what consolation may be expected from that future Judge by
those who now are given to foolish mirth and vain jocularity? If the
Truth says: ‘Woe unto ye who laugh, for ye shall weep,’ what fearful
judgment shall be theirs who not only laugh themselves, but with
scurrilities drag laughter from their listeners?”

The penitent saint then shows from Scripture how that our hearts ought to be vessels of tears, and concludes with casting himself at the feet of his beloved “father” in entreaty that he would interpose the shield of his holy prayers between his petitioner and that monster, and exorcise its serpentine poison, and also that he would ever pour forth prayers to God, and beseech the divine mercy in behalf of all the other vices confessed in this letter.[332]

A strange confession this--or, indeed, is it strange? This cowled Peter Damiani who passes from community to community, seeing more keenly than others may, denouncing, execrating every vice existent or imagined, who wears haircloth, goes barefoot, lives on bread and water, scourges himself with daily flagellations, urging others to do likewise,--this Peter Damiani is yet unable quite to scourge out the human nature from him, and evidently cannot always refrain from that jocularity and _inepta laetitia_ for which the Abbess Hildegard also saw sundry souls in hell.[333] Perhaps, with Peter, revulsions from the strain of austerity took the form of sudden laughter. His imagination was fine, his wit too quick for his soul’s safety. His confession was no matter of mock humility, nor did he deem laughter vulgar or in bad taste. He feared to imperil his soul through it. Of course, in accusing himself of other, and as we should think more serious crimes--drunkenness, robbery, perjury--Peter was merely carrying to an extreme the monkish conventions of self-vilification.

If it appears from this letter that Damiani had been unable quite to scourge his wit out of him, another letter, to a young countess, will show more touchingly that he had been unable quite to fast out of him his human heart.

“To Guilla, most illustrious countess, Peter, monk and sinner, [sends]
the instancy of prayer.

“Since of a thing out of which will issue conflict it is better to
have ignorance without cost, than with dear-bought forgetting wage
hard war, we prudently accord to young women, whose aspect we fear,
audience by letter. Certainly I, who now am an old man, may safely
look upon the seared and wrinkled visage of a blear-eyed crone. Yet
from sight of the more comely and adorned I guard my eyes as boys from
fire. Alas my wretched heart which cannot hold Scriptural mysteries
read through a hundred times, and will not lose the memory of a form
seen but once! There where the divine law remains not, no oblivion
blurs vanity’s image. But of this another time. Here I have not to
write of what is hurtful to me but of what may be salutary for thee.”

Peter then continues with excellent advice for the young noblewoman, exhorting her to deeds of mercy and kindness, and warning her against the enjoyment of revenues wrung from the poor.[334] Indeed Damiani’s writings contain much that still is wise. His advice to the great and noble of the world was admirable,[335] and though couched in austere phrase, it demanded what many men feel bound to fulfil in the twentieth century. His little work on Almsgiving[336] contains sentences which might be spoken to-day. He has been pointing out that no one can be exercising the ascetic virtues all the time: no one can be always praying and fasting, washing feet and subjecting the body to pain. Some people, moreover, shun such self-castigation. But one can always be benevolent; and, though fearing to afflict the body, can stretch forth his hand in charity: “Those then who are rich should seek to be dispensers rather than possessors. They ought not to regard what they have as their own: for they did not receive this transitory wealth in order to revel in luxury, but that they should administer it so long as they continue in their stewardship. Whoever gives to the poor does not distribute his own but restores another’s.”[337]

This sounds modern--it also sounds like Seneca.[338] Yet Damiani was no modern man, nor was he antique, but very fearful of the classics. Having been a rhetorician and grammarian, when he became a hermit-monk he made Christ his grammar (_mea grammatica Christus est_).[339] Horror-stricken at the world, and writhing under his own contamination, he cast body and soul into the ascetic life. That was the harbour of escape from the carnal temptations which threatened the soul’s hope of pardon from the Judge at the Last Day. Therefore Peter is fierce in execration of all lapses from the hermit-life, so rapturously praised with its contrition, its penitence, and tears. His ascetic rhapsodies, with which, as a poet might, he delighted or relieved his soul, are eloquent illustrations of the monastic ideal.[340]

Other men in Italy less intelligent than Damiani, but equally picturesque, were held by like ascetic and emotional obsession. Intellectual interest, however, in theology was less prominent, because the Italian concern with religion was either emotional or ecclesiastical, which is to say, political. The philosophic or dialectical treatment of the Faith was to run its course north of the Alps; and those men of Italian birth--Anselm, Peter Lombard, Bonaventura, and Aquinas--who contributed to Christian thought, early left their native land, and accomplished their careers under intellectual conditions which did not obtain in Italy. Nevertheless, Anselm and Bonaventura at least did not lose their Italian qualities; and it is as representative of what might come out of Italy in the eleventh century that the former may detain us here.

The story of Anselm is told well and lovingly by his companion Eadmer.[341] His life, although it was drawn within the currents of affairs, remained intellectual and aloof, a meditation upon God. It opens with a dream of climbing the mountain to God’s palace-seat. For Anselm’s boyhood was passed at Aosta, within the shadows of the Graian Alps.[342] Surely the heaven rested upon them. Might he not then go up to the hall where God, above in the heaven, as the boy’s mother taught, ruled and held all?

“So one night it seemed he must ascend to the summit of the mountains,
and go to the hall of the great King. In the plain at the first
slopes, he saw women, the servants of the King, reaping grain
carelessly and idly. He would accuse them to their Lord. He went up
across the summit and came to the King’s hall. He found Him there
alone with His seneschal, for it was autumn and He had sent His
servants to gather the harvest. The Lord called the boy as he entered;
and he went and sat at His feet. The Lord asked kindly (_jucunda
affabilitate_) whence he came and what he wished. He replied just as
he knew the thing to be (_juxta quod rem esse sciebat_). Then, at the
Lord’s command, the Seneschal brought him bread of the whitest, and he
was there refreshed in His presence. In the morning he verily believed
that he had been in Heaven and had been refreshed with the bread of
the Lord.”

A pious mother had been the boy’s first teacher. Others taught him Letters, till he became proficient, and beloved by those who knew him. He wished to be made a monk, but a neighbouring abbot refused his request, fearing the displeasure of Anselm’s father, of whom the biographer has nothing good to say. The youth fell sick, but with returning health the joy of living drew his mind from study and his pious purpose. Love for his mother held him from over-indulgence in pastimes. She died, and with this sheet-anchor lost, Anselm’s ship was near to drifting out on the world’s slippery flood. But here the impossible temper of the father wrought as God’s providence, and Anselm, unable to stay with him, left his home, and set out across Mount Senis attended by one clericus. For three years he moved through Burgundy and Francia, till Lanfranc’s repute drew him to Bec. Day and night he studied beneath that master, and also taught. The desire to be a monk returned; and he began to direct his purpose toward pleasing God and spurning the world.

But where? At either Cluny or Bec he feared to lose the fruit of his studies; for at Cluny there was the strictness of the rule,[343] and at Bec Lanfranc’s eminent learning would “make mine of little value.” Anselm says that he was not yet subdued, nor had the contempt of the world become strong in him. Then the thought came: “Is this to be a monk to wish to be set before others and magnified above them? Nay,--become a monk where, for the sake of God, you will be put after all and be held viler than all. And where can this be? Surely at Bec. I shall be of no weight while he is here, whose wisdom and repute are enough for all. Here then is my rest, here God alone will be my purpose, here the single love of Him will be my thought, and here the constant remembrance of Him will be a happy consolation.”

Scripture bade him: Do all things with counsel. Whom but Lanfranc should he consult? So he laid three plans before him--to become a monk, a hermit, or (his father being dead) for the sake of God administer his patrimony for the poor. Lanfranc persuaded Anselm to refer the decision to the venerable Archbishop of Rouen. Together they went to him, and such, says the biographer, was Anselm’s reverence for Lanfranc, that on the way, passing through the wood near Bec, had Lanfranc bade him stay in that wood, he would not have left it all his days.

The archbishop decided for the monastic life. So Anslem took the vows of a monk at Bec, being twenty-seven years of age. Lanfranc was then Prior, but soon left to become Abbot of St. Stephen’s at Caen.[344] Made Prior in his place, Anselm devoted himself in gentleness and wisdom to the care of the monks and to meditation upon God and the divine truths. He was especially considerate of the younger monks, whose waywardness he guided and whose love he won. The envy of cavillers was stilled. Yet the business of office harassed one whose thoughts dwelled more gladly in the blue heaven with God. Again he sought the counsel of the archbishop; for Herluin, the first Abbot and founder of Bec, still lived on, old and unlettered, and apparently no great fount of wisdom. The archbishop commanded him _per sanctam obedientiam_ not to renounce his office, nor refuse if called to a higher one. So, sad but resolute, he returned to the convent, and resumed his burdens in such wise as to be held by all as a loved father. It was at this period that he wrote several treatises upon the high doctrinal themes which filled his thoughts. Gradually his mind settled to the search after some single proof of that which is believed concerning God--that He exists, and is eternal, unchanging, omnipotent, just, and pitying, and is truth and goodness. This thing caused him great difficulty. Not only it kept him from food and drink and sleep, but what weighed upon him more, it interfered with his devotion to God’s service. Reflecting thus, and unable to reach a valid conclusion, he decided that such speculation was a temptation of the devil, and tried to drive it from his thoughts. But the more he struggled, the more it beset him. And one night, at the time of the nocturnal vigils, the grace of God shed light in his heart, and the argument was clear to his mind, and filled his inmost being with an immense jubilation. All the more now was he confirmed in the love of God and the contempt of the world, of which one night he had a vision as of a torrent filled with obscene filth, and carrying in its flood the countless host of people of the world, while apart and aloof from its slime rose the sweet cloister, with its walls of silver, surrounded by silvery herbage, all delectable beyond conception.

In the year 1078 old Herluin died. Anselm long had guided the convent, and with one voice the brethren chose him Abbot. He reasoned and argued, but could not dissuade them, and in his anxiety he knew not what to do. Some days passed. He had recourse to entreaties; with tears he flung himself prostrate before them all, praying and protesting in the name of God, and beseeching them, if they had any bowels of compassion, to permit him to remain free from this great burden. But they only cast themselves upon the earth, and prayed that he would rather commiserate them, and not disregard the convent’s good. At length he yielded, for the command of the archbishop came to his mind. Such a scene occurs often in monastic history. None the less is it moving when the participants are in earnest, as Anselm was, and his monks.

So Anselm’s life opened; so it sought counsel, gathered strength, and centred to its purpose, pursuing as its goal the thought of God. Anselm had love and gentleness for his fellows; he drew their love and reverence. Yet, aloof, he lived within his spirit. Did he open its hidden places even to Lanfranc? Although one who in his humility always desired counsel, perhaps neither Lanfranc nor Eadmer, the friend whom the Pope gave him for an adviser, knew the meditations of his heart. We at all events should discern little of them by following the outer story of his life. It might even be fruitless to sail with him across the channel to visit Lanfranc, now Primate of England. The biographer has nothing to tell of the converse between the two, although quite rightly impressed at the meeting between him who was pre-eminent in _auctoritas_ and _scientia_ and him who excelled in _sanctitas_ and _sapientia Dei_. Nor would it enlighten us to follow Anselm’s archiepiscopal career, save so far as to realize that he who lives in the thought of God will fear no brutal earthly majesty, such as that of William Rufus, to admonish whom Anselm once more crossed the Channel after Lanfranc’s death. Whatever this despoiler of bishoprics then thought, he fell sick afterwards, and, being terrified, named Anselm archbishop, this being in the year 1093. One may imagine the unison between them! and how little the Red King’s ways would turn the enskied steadfastness of Anselm’s soul. But the king had the power, and could keep the archbishop in trouble and in peril. Anselm asked and asked again for leave to go to Rome, and the king refused. After more than one stormy scene--the storm being always on the Red King’s part--Anselm made it plain that he would obey God rather than man in the matter. At the very last he went in to the king and his Court, and seating himself quietly at the king’s right he said: “I, my lord, shall go, as I have determined. But first, if you do not decline it, I will give you my blessing.” So the king acquiesced.

The archbishop went first to Canterbury, to comfort and strengthen his monks, and spoke to them assembled together:

“Dearly beloved brothers and sons, I am, as you know, about to leave
this kingdom. The contention with our lord the king as to Christian
discipline, has reached this pass that I must either do what is
contrary to God and my own honour, or leave the realm. Gladly I go,
hoping through the mercy of God that my journey may advance the
Church’s liberty hereafter. I am moved to pity you, upon whom greater
tribulations will come in my absence. Even with me here you have not
been unoppressed, yet I think I have given you more peace than you
have had since the death of our Father Lanfranc. I think those who
molest you will rage the more with me away. You, however, are not
undisciplined in the school of the Lord. Nevertheless I will say
something, because, since you have come together within the close of
this monastery to fight for God, you should always have before your
eyes how you should fight.

“All retainers do not fight in the same way either for an earthly
prince, or for God whose are all things that are. The angels
established in eternal beatitude wait upon Him. He has also men who
serve Him for earthly benefits, like hired knights. He has also some
who, cleaving to His will, contend to reach the kingdom of heaven,
which they have forfeited through Adam’s fault. Observe the knights
who are in God’s pay. Many you see leading a secular life and cleaving
to the household of God for the good things which they gain in His
service. But when, by God’s judgment, trial comes to them, and
disaster, they fly from His love and accuse Him of injustice. We
monks--would that we were such as not to be like them! For those who
cannot stand to their professed purpose unless they have all things
comfortable, and do not wish to suffer destitution for God, how shall
they not be held like to these? And shall such be heirs of the kingdom
of heaven? Faithfully I say, No, never, unless they repent.

“He who truly contends toward recovering the kingdom of life, strives
to cleave to God through all; no adversity draws him from God’s
service, no pleasure lures him from the love of Him. _Per dura et
aspera_ he treads the way of His commands, and from hope of the reward
to come, his heart is aflame with the ardour of love, and sings with
the Psalmist, Great is the glory of the Lord. Which glory he tastes in
this pilgrimage, and tasting, he desires, and desiring, salutes as
from afar. Supported by the hope of attaining, he is consoled amid the
perils of the world and gladly sings, Great is the glory of the Lord.
Know that this one will in no way be defrauded of that glory of the
Lord, since all that is in him serves the Lord, and is directed to
winning this reward. But I see that there is no need to say to you
another word. My brothers, since we are separated now in grief, I
beseech you so to strive that hereafter we may be united joyfully
before God. Be ye those who truly wish to be made heirs of God.”

The clarity and gentle love of this high argument is Anselm. Now the story follows of Anselm and Eadmer and another monk travelling on, sometimes unknown, sometimes acclaimed, through France to Italy and Rome. Anselm’s face inspired reverence in those who did not know him, and the peace of his countenance attracted even Saracens. Had he been born and bred in England, he might have managed better with the Red King. He never got an English point of view, but remained a Churchman with Italian-Hildebrandine convictions. Of course, two policies were clashing then in England, where it happened that there was on one side an able and rapacious tyrant, while the other was represented by a man with the countenance and temperament of an angel. But we may leave Anselm now in Italy, where he is beyond the Red King’s molestation, and turn to his writings.

Their choice and treatment of subject was partly guided by the needs of his pupils and friends at Bec and elsewhere in Normandy or Francia or England. For he wrote much at their solicitation; and the theological problems of which solutions were requested, suggest the intellectual temper of those regions, rather than of Italy. In a way Anselm’s works, treating of separate and selected Christian questions, are a proper continuation of those composed by northern theologians in the ninth century on Predestination and the Eucharist.[345] Only Anselm’s were not evoked by the exigency of actual controversy as much as by the insistency of the eleventh-century mind, and the need it felt of some adjustment regarding certain problems. Anselm’s theological and philosophic consciousness is clear and confident. His faculties are formative and creative, quite different from the compiling instincts of Alcuin or Rabanus. The matter of his argument has become his own; it has been remade in his thinking, and is presented as from himself--and God. He no longer conceives himself as one searching through the “pantries” of the Fathers or culling the choice flowers of their “meadows.” He will set forth the matter as God has deigned to disclose it to him. In the _Cur Deus homo_ he begins by saying that he has been urged by many, verbally and by letter, to consider the reasons why God became man and suffered, and then, assenting, says: “Although, from the holy Fathers on, what should suffice has been said, yet concerning this question I will endeavour to set forth for my inquirers what God shall deign to disclose to me.”[346]

Certain works of Anselm, the _Monologion_, for instance, present the dry and the formal method of reasoning which was to make its chief home in France; others, like the _Proslogion_, seem to be Italian in a certain beautiful emotionalism. The feeling is very lofty, even lifted out of the human, very skyey, even. The _Proslogion_, the _Meditationes_, do not throb with the red blood of Augustine’s _Confessions_, the writing which influenced them most. The quality of their feeling suggests rather Dante’s _Paradiso_; and sometimes with Anselm a sense of formal beauty and perfection seems to disclose the mind of Italy. Moreover, Anselm’s Latin style appears Italian. It is elastic, even apparently idiomatic, and varies with the temper and character of his different works. Throughout, it shows in Latin the fluency and simple word-order natural to an author whose _vulgaris eloquentia_ was even closer to Latin in the time of Anselm than when Dante wrote.

So Anselm’s writings were intimately part of their author, and very part of his life-long meditation upon God. Led by the solicitations of others, as well as impelled by the needs of his own faculties and nature, he takes up one Christian problem after another, and sets forth his understanding of it with his conclusion. He is devout, an absolute believer; and he is wonderfully metaphysical. He is a beautiful, a sublimated, and idealizing reasoner, convinced that a divine reality must exist in correspondence with his thought, which projects itself aloft to evoke from the blue an answering reality. The inspiration, the radiating point of Anselm’s intellectual interest, is clearly given--to understand that which he first believes. It is a spontaneous intellectual interest, not altogether springing from a desire to know how to be saved. It does not seek to understand in order to believe; but seeks the happiness of knowing and understanding that which it believes and loves. Listen to some sentences from the opening of the _Proslogion_:

“Come now, mannikin, flee thy occupations for a little, and hide from
the confusion of thy cares. Be vacant a little while for God, and for
a little rest in Him.... Now, O Lord my God, teach my heart where and
how to seek thee, where and how to find thee. Lord, Lord, illuminate
us; show us thyself. Pity us labouring toward thee, impotent without
thee.... Teach me to seek thee, and show thyself to my search; for I
cannot seek thee unless thou dost teach, nor find thee unless thou
dost show thyself.... I make no attempt, Lord, to penetrate thy
depths, for my intellect has no such reach; but I desire to understand
some measure of thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. I do not
seek to know in order that I may believe; but I believe, that I may
know. For I believe this also, that unless I shall have believed, I
shall not understand.”[347]

So Anselm is first a believer, then a theologian; and his reason devotes itself to the elucidation of his faith. Faith prescribes his intellectual interests, and sets their bounds. His thought does not occupy itself with matters beyond. But it takes a pure intellectual delight in reasoning upon the God which his faith presents and his heart cleaves to. The motive is the intellectual and loving delight which his mind takes in this pursuit. His faith was sure and undisturbed, and ample for his salvation. His intellect, affected by no motive beyond its own strength and joy, delights in reasoning upon the matter of his faith.[348]

We may still linger for a moment to observe how closely part of Anselm’s nature was his proof of the existence of God.[349] It sprang directly from his saintly soul and the compelling idealism of his reason. In the _Monologion_ Anselm ranged his many arguments concerning the nature and attributes of the _summum bonum_ which is God. Its chain of inductions failed to satisfy him and his pupils. So he set his mind to seek a sole and unconditioned proof (as Eadmer states in the _Vita_) of God’s existence and the attributes which faith ascribes to Him. Anselm says the same in the Preface to the _Proslogion_:

“Considering that the prior work was woven out of a concatenation of
many arguments, I set to seek within myself (_mecum_) whether I might
not discover one argument which needed nothing else than itself alone
for its proof; and which by itself might suffice to show that God
truly exists, and that He is the _summum bonum_ needing nothing else,
but needed by all things in order that they may exist and have
well-being (_ut sint et bene sint_); and whatever we believe
concerning the divine substance.”

The famous proof which at length flashed upon him is substantially this: By very definition the word _God_ means the greatest conceivable being. This conception exists even in the atheist’s mind, for he knows what is meant by the words, the absolutely greatest. But the greatest cannot be in the intellect alone, for then conceivably there would be a greater which would exist in reality as well. And since, by definition, God is the absolutely greatest, He must exist in reality as well as in the mind.[350] Carrying out the scholia to this argument, Anselm then proves that God possesses the various attributes ascribed to Him by the Christian Faith.

That from a definition one may not infer the existence of the thing defined, was pointed out by a certain monk Gaunilo almost as soon as the _Proslogion_ appeared. Anselm answered him that the argument applied only to the greatest conceivable being. Since that time Anselm’s proof has been upheld and disproved many times. It was at all events a great dialectic leap; but likely one may not with such a bound cross the chasm from definition to existence--at least one will be less bold to try when he realizes that this chasm is there. Temperamentally, at least, this proof was the summit of Anselm’s idealism: he could not but conceive things to exist in correspondence to the demands of his conceptions. He never made another so palpable leap from conception to conviction as in this proof of God’s existence; yet his theology proceeded through like processes of thought. For example, he is sure of God’s omnipotence, and also sure that God can do nothing which would detract from the perfection of His nature: God cannot lie: “For it does not follow, if God wills to lie that it is just to lie; but rather that He is not God. For only that will can will to lie in which truth is corrupted, or rather which is corrupted by forsaking truth. Therefore when one says ‘if God wills to lie,’ he says in substance, ‘if God is of such a nature as to will to lie.’”[351]

Anselm’s other famous work was the _Cur Deus homo_, upon the problem why God became man to redeem mankind. It was connected with his view of sin, and the fall of the angels, as set forth chiefly in his dialogue _De casu Diaboli_. One may note certain cardinal points in his exposition: Man could be redeemed only by God; for he would have been the bond-servant of whoever redeemed him, and to have been the servant of any one except God would not have restored him to the dignity which would have been his had he not sinned.[352] Or again: The devil had no rights over man, which he lost by unjustly slaying God. For man was not the devil’s, nor does the devil belong to himself but to God.[353] Evidently Anselm frees himself from the conception of any ransom paid to the devil, or any trickery put on him--thoughts which had lowered current views of the Atonement. Anselm’s arguments (which are too large, and too interwoven with his views upon connected subjects, to be done justice to by any casual statement) are free from degrading foolishness. His reasonings were deeply felt, as one may see in his _Meditationes_, where thought and feeling mutually support and enhance each other. So he recalls Augustine, the great model and predecessor whom he followed and revered. And still the feeling in Anselm’s _Meditationes_, as in the _Proslogion_, is somewhat sublimated and lifted above human heart-throbs. Perhaps it may seem rhetorical, and intentionally stimulated in order to edify. Even in the _Meditationes_ upon the humanity and passion of Jesus, Anselm is not very close to the quivering tenderness of St. Bernard, and very far from the impulsive and passionate love of Francis of Assisi. One thinks that his feelings rarely distorted his countenance or wet it with tears.[354]