Chapter XVI: The Hermit Temper

PETER DAMIANI; ROMUALD; DOMINICUS LORICATUS; BRUNO AND GUIGO,
CARTHUSIANS

To contemplate goodness in God, and strain toward it in yearning love, is the method of the Christian _vita contemplativa_. In this way the recluse cultivates humility, patience, purity, and love, and perfects his soul for heaven. And herein, in that it is more undistracted and more undisturbed, lies the superiority of the solitary life over the coenobitic.

Yet this conceived superiority is but the reason and the conscious motive for the solitary life. The call to it is felt as well as intellectually accepted. It is temperament that makes the recluse; his reasons are but his justification. In solitude he lives the reaches of his life; from solitude he draws his utmost bliss. To leave it involves the torture of separation, and then all the petty pains of unhappy labour and distasteful intercourse with men. “Whoever would reach the summit of perfection should keep within the cloister of his seclusion, cherish spiritual leisure, and shudder at traversing the world, as if he were about to plunge into a sea of blood. For the world is so filthy with vices, that any holy mind is befouled even by thinking about it.”[444]

Here speaks the hermit temper, by the mouth of a supreme exponent. If Hildebrand, who compelled all men to his purposes, kept Peter Damiani in the world, that ascetic soul did not cease to yearn for the hermit life. His skilful pen served it untiringly. Its temper, its merits, and its grounds, appear with unique clarity in the writings of him who, sore against his will, was the Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia.[445]

“The solitary life is the school of celestial doctrine and the divine
arts (_artes divinae_),” says Damiani, meaning every word. “For there
God is the whole that is learned. He is also the way by which one
advances, through which one attains knowledge of the sum of
truth.”[446] To obtain its benefits, it must be led assiduously and
without break or wandering abroad among men: “Habit makes his cell
sweet to the monk, but roving makes it seem horrible.... The unbroken
hermit life is a cooling refreshment (_refrigerium_); but, if
interrupted, it seems a torment. Through continued seclusion the soul
is illuminated, vices are uncovered, and whatever of himself had been
hidden from the man, is disclosed.”[447]

Peter argues that the hermit life is free from temptations (!) and offers every aid to victory.

“The wise man, bent on safeguarding his salvation, watches always to
destroy his vices; he girds his loins--and his belly--with the girdle
of perfect mortification. Truly that takes place when the itching
palate is suppressed, when the pert tongue is held in silence, the ear
is shut off from distractions and the eye from unpermitted sights;
when the hand is held from cruel striking, and the foot from vainly
roving; when the heart is withstood, that it may not envy another’s
felicity, nor through avarice covet what is not its own, nor through
anger sever itself from fraternal love, nor vaunt itself arrogantly
above its fellows, nor yield to the ticklings of lust, nor
immoderately sink itself in grief or abandon itself wantonly to joy.
Since, then, the human mind has not the power to remain entirely
empty, and unoccupied with the love of something, it is girt around
with a wall of the virtues.

“In this way, then, our mind begins to be at rest in its Author and to
taste the sweetness of that intimacy. At once it rejects whatever it
deems contrary to the divine law, shrinks from what does not agree
with the rule of supernal righteousness. Hence true mortification is
born; hence it comes that man kissing the Cross of his Redeemer seems
dead to the world. No longer he delights in silly fables, nor is
content to waste his time with idle talk. But he is free for psalms
and hymns and spiritual songs; he seeks seclusion, he longs for a
hiding-place; he avoids the monastery’s conversation-rooms and
rejoices in nooks and corners; and that he may the more freely attend
to the contemplation of his Creator, so far as he may he declines
colloquy with men.”[448]

“In fine,” says Damiani, in another treatise, “our entire conversion,
and renunciation of the world, aims at nothing else than rest. This
rest is won through the man’s prior discipline in the toils of strife,
in order that when the tumult of disturbance ceases, his mind, through
the grace of contemplation, may be translated to gaze upon the face of
truth. But since one attains to this rest only through labour and
conflict, how can one reach it who has not gone down into the strife?
By what right can one enter the halls of the King who has not
traversed the arena before the doors?”[449]

“It further behoves each brother who with his whole heart has
abandoned the world, to unlearn and forget forever whatever is
injurious. He should not be disputatious as to cookery, nor clever in
the petty matters of the town; nor an adept in rhetoric’s jinglings,
or in jokes or wordplay. He should love fasts and cherish penury; he
should flee the sight of man, restrain himself under the censorship of
silence, withdraw from affairs, keep his mouth from idle talk, and
seek the hiding-place of his soul, and in such hiding be on fire to
see the face of his Creator. Let him pant for tears, and implore God
for them by daily prayer.”

With this last sentence Damiani makes his transition to the emotional side of the Christian _vita contemplativa_. He will now pour himself out in a rhapsody of praise of tears, which purify and refresh the soul, and open it to the love of God.

“From the fire of divine love rises the grace of contrition (_gratia
compunctionis_), and again from the contrition of tears (_ex
compunctione lacrymarum_) the ardour of celestial yearning is
increased. The one hangs from the other, and each promotes the other;
while the contrition of tears flows from the love of God, through
tears again our soul burns more fervidly toward the love of God. In
this reciprocal and alternating action, the soul is purged of the
filth of its offence.”[450]

Elsewhere Damiani suggests how the hermit may acquire the “grace of tears”:

“Seclude thyself from the turmoil of secular affairs and often even
from talk with thy brethren. Cut off the cares and anxieties of
mundane action; clear them away as a heap of rubbish which stops the
fountain’s flow. As water in a cavern of the earth wells up from the
abyss, so sadness (_tristitia_) wells in a human heart from
contemplation of the profundity of God’s Judgment, and yet will not
flow forth in tears if checked by the clods of earthly hindrance.
Sadness is the material of tears. But in order that the veins of this
fount may flow more abundantly, do thou clear away all obstacles of
secular business--and other matters also, as I know from experience.
Even spiritual zeal in the punishment of delinquents, and the labour
of preaching, and like matters, holy as they are and commanded by
divine authority, nevertheless are certainly obstacles to tears.

“So if you would attain the grace of tears, you must even curb the
exercise of spiritual duties, eliminate malice, anger, and hatred, and
the other pests from your heart. And do not let your own accusing
conscience dry up the dew of tears with the aridity of fear. Indeed
the confidence of holiness (_sanctitatis fiducia_) and a conscience
bearing witness to its own innocence, waters the pure soul with the
celestial rivulets of grace, softens the hardness of the impure heart,
and opens the floodgates of weeping.”[451]

“Many are the ways,” says Damiani in words sounding like a final
reflection upon the solitary life--“many are the ways by which one
comes to God; diverse are the orders in the society of the faithful;
but among them all there is no way so straight, so sure, so unimpeded,
so free from obstacles which trip one’s feet, as this holy life. It
eliminates occasions for sin; it cultivates the greatest number of
virtues by which God may be pleased; and thus, as it removes the
opportunities of delinquency, it lays upon good conduct the added
strength of necessity’s insistence.”[452]

Peter Damiani, exiled from solitude, found no task more grateful than that of writing the Life of his older contemporary, St. Romualdus, the founder of Camaldoli and other hermit communities in Italy. That man had completely lived the life from which the Church’s exigencies dragged his biographer. Peter put himself, as well as his best literary powers, into this _Vita Romualdi_, and made it one of the most vivid of mediaeval _Vitae sanctorum_. If Romuald was a hermit in the flesh, Damiani had the imagination to make the hermit spirit speak.[453]

“Against thee, unclean world, we cry, that thou hast an intolerable
crowd of the foolish wise, eloquent as regards thee, mute as to God.
Wise are they to do evil; they know not how to do good. For behold
almost three _lustra_[454] have passed since the blessed Romualdus,
laying aside the burden of flesh, migrated to the heavenly realm, and
no one has arisen from these wise people to place upon the page of
history even a few of the lessons of that wonderful life.”

The tone of this prologue suggests the kind of lessons found by the biographer in the Life of Romuald. He was born of an illustrious Ravenna family about the year 950. In youth his devout mind became conscious of the sinfulness of the flesh. Whenever he went hunting, as was his wont, and would come to a retired nook in the woods, the hermit yearning came over him--and in love, says Damiani, he was prescient of what he was later to fulfil in deed.

His father chanced to kill a neighbour in knightly brawl; and for this homicide the son entered the monastery of St. Apollinaris in Classe, to do forty days’ penance for his parent. This introduction to the cloister had its natural effect on such a temper. Goaded by a vision of the saint, Romuald became a monk. He soon showed himself no easy man. His harsh censure of the brethren’s laxities caused a plot to murder him, the first of many attempts upon his life.

Three years he dwelt there. Then the yearning for perfection drove him forth, and, for a master, he sought out a hermit named Marinus, who lived in the Venetian territory, a man well meaning, but untaught as to the method of the hermit life. He and his disciple would issue from their cell and wander, singing together twenty psalms under one tree, and then thirty or forty under another. The disciple was unlettered, and the master rude. Romuald experienced intolerable tedium from straining his fixed eyes upon a psalter, which he could not read. He may have betrayed his _ennui_. At all events Marinus, grasping his rod in his right hand, and sitting on his disciple’s left, continually beat him, and always on the left side of his head. At length Romuald said humbly: “Master, if you please, would you henceforth beat me on the right side, as I have lost the hearing of my left ear.”

In the neighbourhood there dwelt a duke whose rapacity had brought him into peril. It happened that the abbot of a monastery situated not far from Chalons-sur-Marne in France came pilgrimaging that way, and the duke took counsel of him. The two hermits were also called; and the advice to the duke was to flee the world. So the whole party set forth, crossed the Alps, and travelled to the abbot’s monastery. There the duke became a monk, while Romuald and Marinus dwelt as solitaries a little way off.

From this time Romuald increased in virtue, far outstripping all the brethren. He supplied his wants by tilling the soil, and fasted exceedingly. He sustained continual conflicts with the devil, who was always bringing into his mind the loves and hates of his former life in the world.

“The devil would come striking on his cell, just as Romuald was
falling asleep, and then no sleep for him. Every night for nearly five
years the devil pressed crosses upon his feet, and weighted them with
the likeness of a phantom weight, so that Romuald could scarcely turn
on his couch. How often did the devil let loose the raging beasts of
the vices! and how often did Romuald put them to flight by his dire
threats! Hence if any of the brethren came in the silence, knocking at
his door, the soldier of Christ, always ready for battle, taking him
for the devil, would threaten and cry out: ‘What now, wretch! what is
there for thee in the hermitage, outcast of heaven! Back, unclean dog!
Vanish, old snake!’ He declared that with such words as these he gave
battle to malignant spirits; and with the arms of faith would go out
and meet the challenge of the foe in a neighbouring field.”

Marvellously Romuald increased his fasts and austerities, after the manner of the old anchorites of Egypt.[455] Miraculous powers became his. But news came of his father which drew him back to Italy. That noble but sinful parent had entered a monastery where, under the persuasion of the devil, he was soon sorry for his conversion, and sought to return to the world. Romuald decided to go to his perishing father’s aid. But the people of the region hearing of it, were distressed to lose a man of such spiritual might. They took counsel how to prevent his departure, and with impious piety (_impia pietate_) decided to send men to kill him, thinking that since they could not retain him alive, they would have his corpse as a protection for the land (_pro patrocinio terrae_). Knowing of this, Romuald shaved his head, and as the murderers approached his cell in the dusk of morning, he began to eat ravenously. Thinking him demented, they did him no injury. He then set forth, staff in hand, and walked from the centre of Gaul, even to Ravenna. There finding his father still seeking to return to the world, he tied the old sinner’s feet to a beam, fettered him with chains, flogged him, and at length by pious severity so subjugated his flesh that with God’s aid he brought his mind back to a state of salvation.[456]

Thus far Romuald’s life affords striking illustration of the fact that prodigious austerities and the consequent repute for miracles were the chief elements in mediaeval sainthood; also of the fact that the saint’s dead body might be as good as he. But while he lived, Romuald was much more than a miracle-working relic. He was a strong, domineering personality. It was soon after he brought his father back to the way of holiness that the old man saw a vision, and happily yielded up the ghost. The son continued to advance in his chosen way of life and in the elements of character which it fostered. He became a prodigious solitary; one to whom men and their ways were intolerable, and who himself was sometimes found intolerable by men. Even his appearance might be exceptional:

“The venerable man dwelt for a while in a swamp (near Ferrara). At
length the poisonous air and the stench of the marsh drove him out;
and he emerged hairless, with his flesh puffed and swollen
(_tumefactus et depilatus_), not looking as if belonging to the _genus
homo_; for he was as green as a newt.”[457]

Such a story displays the very extravagance of fleshly mortification. It has also its local colour. But one should seek its explanation in the grounds of the hermit life as set forth by Peter Damiani. Then the incidents of Romuald’s life will appear to spring from these hermit motives and from the hermit temperament, which became of terrible intensity with him. Also the egotism, so frequently an element of that temperament, rose with him to spiritual megalomania:

“One day (apparently in the latter part of his life) some disciples
asked him, ‘Master, of what age does the soul appear, and in what form
is it presented for Judgment?’ He replied, ‘I know a man in Christ,
whose soul is brought before God shining like snow, and indeed in
human form, with the stature of the perfect time of life.’ Asked again
who that man might be, he would not speak for indignation. And then
the disciples talked it over, and recognized that he was certainly the
man.”[458]

In another part of the _Vita_, Damiani, having told of his hero’s sojourn with a company of hermits who preferred their will to his, thus continues: “Romuald, therefore, impatient of sterility, began to search with anxious eagerness where he might find a soil fit to bear a fruitage of souls.” It was his passion to change men to anchorites: he yearned to convert the whole world to the solitary life. Many were the hermit communities which he established. But he could not endure his hermit sons for long, nor they him. His intolerant soul revolted from the give and take of intercourse. Such intolerance and his passion to make more converts drove him from place to place. He seemed inspired with a superhuman power of drawing men from the world. Now

“therefore he sent messengers to the Counts of Camerino. When these
heard the name of Romuald they were beside themselves with joy, and
placed their possessions, mountains, woods, and fields at his
disposal, to select from. He chose a spot suited to the hermit way of
living, intrenched amid forests and mountains, and affording an ample
space of level fruitful ground, watered with crystal streams. The
place was called of old the Valley of the Camp (Vallis de Castro), and
a little church was there with a convent of women who had turned from
the world. Here having built their cells, the venerable man and his
disciples took up their abode.

“And what fruitage of souls the Lord there won through him, pen cannot
describe nor tongue relate. From all directions men began to pour in,
for penance and to bequeath in pity their goods to the poor, while
others utterly forsook the world and with fervent spirit hastened to
the holy way of life. For this most blessed man was as one of the
Seraphim, himself burning with the flame of divine love, and kindling
others, wherever he went, with the fires of his holy preaching. Often,
while speaking, a vast contrition brought him to such floods of tears
that, breaking off his sermon, he would flee anywhere for refuge, like
one demented. And also when travelling on horseback with the brethren,
he followed far behind them, always singing psalms, as if he were in
his cell, and never ceasing to shed tears.”[459]

In that age, the hopes and fears and wonderment of men looked to the recluse as the perfected saint. No wonder that those Italian lands, so blithely sinful and so grievously penitent, were moved by this volcanic tempest of a man, fierce, merciless to the flesh, convulsed with scorching tears, famed for austerities and miracles. He lashed men from their sins; men feared before one whose presence was a threat of hell. Said the Marquis of Tuscany: “Not the emperor nor any mortal man, can put such fear in me as Romuald’s look. Before his face I know not what to say, nor how to defend myself or find excuses.” And the biographer adds that “of a truth the holy man had this grace from the divine favour, that sinners, and especially the great of this world, quaked in their bowels before him as if before the majesty of God.”[460]

But some men hated, and especially those of his own persuasion who could not endure his harshness. From such came attempts at murder, from such also came milder outbreaks of detestation and revolt. No other founder of ascetic communities seems to have been so rebelled against. He went from the Valley of the Camp to Classe, where a simoniac abbot attempted to strangle him; then he returned, but not for long, for the abbot established in his place rejected his reproofs, and maligned him with the lords of the land. “And in that way,” says Damiani, “the tall cedar of Paradise was cast forth from the forest of earthly men.”[461]

His next sojourn was Vallombrosa, where after his decease one of his disciples was to found a famous cloister. From that nest in the Tuscan Apennines, he went to dwell permanently on the Umbrian mount of Sytrio. At this point his biographer proceeds:

“Whoever hears that the holy man so often changed his habitation, must
not ascribe this to the vice of levity. For the cause of these changes
was that wherever he stayed, an almost countless crowd assembled, and
when he saw one place filled with converts he very properly would
appoint a prior and at once hasten to fill another.

“In Sytrio what insults and what indignities he endured from his
disciples! We will set down one instance, and omit the rest for
brevity. There was a disciple named Romanus, noble by birth, but
ignoble by deed. Him the holy man for his carnal impurity not only
chided by word but corrected with heavy beatings. That diabolic man
dared to retort with the fabrication of the same charge, and to bark
with sacrilegious mouth against this temple of the Holy Spirit, saying
forsooth that the holy man was spotted with this same infection. The
rage of the disciples broke out immediately against Romuald. All were
his enemies: some declared that the wicked old man ought to be hanged
from a gallows, others that he should be burned in his cell.

“One cannot understand how spiritual men could have believed such
wickedness of a decrepit old man, whose frigid blood and aridity of
attenuated frame would have forbade him, had he had the will. But
doubtless it is to be deemed that this scourge of adversity came upon
the holy man by the will of Heaven, to augment his merit. For he said
himself that he had foreknown it with certainty in the solitude which
he had left just before, and had come with alacrity to undergo this
shame. But that false monkish reprobate who brought the charge against
the holy man, afterwards became Bishop of Noceria through simony, and
in the first year of his occupancy, saw, as he deserved, his house
with his books and bells and the rest of his sacred paraphernalia
burned; and in the second year, the divine sentence struck him and he
wretchedly lost both his dignity and his life.

“In the meanwhile the disciples put a penance on the holy man as if he
had been guilty, and deprived him of the right to celebrate the holy
mysteries. He willingly accepted this false judgment, and took his
penance like a culprit, not presuming to approach the altar for
well-nigh six months. At length, as he afterwards told his disciples,
he was divinely commanded to celebrate mass. On the next day, when
proceeding with the sacrifice, he became rapt in ecstasy, and
continued speechless for so long a time that all present marvelled.
When afterwards asked the reason of his delay, he replied: ‘Carried
into heaven, I was borne before God; and the divine voice commanded
me, that with such intelligence as God had set in me, I should write
and commend for use a Commentary on the Psalms. Overcome with terror,
I could only respond: so let it be, so let it be.’ For this reason the
holy man made a Commentary on the whole Psalter; and although its
grammar was bad, its sense was sound and clear.”[462]

Various attempts were made in the Middle Ages to render the hermit life practicable, through permitting a limited intercourse among a cluster of like-minded ascetics, as well as to regulate it under the direction of a superior. In Italy, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the picturesque energy of the individual hermit is prodigious, while in the north, as in the establishment of the Carthusian Order, the organization is better, the result more permanent, but the imaginative and consistent extravagance of personality is not there. In the hermit communities founded by Romuald there was a prior or abbot, invested with some authority. Yet the organization was less complete than in coenobitic monasteries; for Romuald’s hermit methods sought to minimize the intercourse among the brethren, to an extent which was scarcely compatible with effective organization. An idea of these communities may be had from Damiani’s description of one of them:

“Such was the mode of life in Sytrio, that not only in name but in
fact it was as another Nytria.[463] The brethren went barefoot;
unkempt and haggard; they were content with the barest necessaries.
Some were shut in with doomed doors (_damnatis januis_), seemingly as
dead to the world as if in a tomb. Wine was unknown, even in extreme
illness. The attendants of the monks (_famuli monachorum_) and those
who kept the cattle, fasted and preserved silence. They made
regulations among themselves, and laid penances for speaking.”[464]

For seven years Romuald lived at Sytrio as an _inclusus_, shut up in his cell, and preserving unbroken silence. Yet though his tongue was dumb his life was eloquent. He lived on, setting a shining example of squalor and austerity, eating only vile food, and handing back untouched any savoury morsel. His conflicts with the devil continued; nor was he ever vanquished. Advancing years intensified his aversion to human society and his passion for solitude. In proportion as he made his ways displeasing to men, his self-approval was enhanced.[465] A solitary death kept tally with the temper of a recluse life.

“When he saw his end draw near he returned to the Valley of the Camp,
and had a cell with an oratory prepared, in which to immure himself
and keep silence until death. Twenty years before, he had foretold to
his disciples that there he should attain his peace; and had declared
his wish to breathe forth his spirit with no one standing by or
bestowing the last rites. When this cell of immurement (_reclusorium_)
was ready, the mind in Romuald was so that it scarcely could be
imprisoned. But his body grew heavy with the increasing ills of
extreme age, and the hard breathing of tussis. Yet not for this would
the holy man lie on a bed or relax his fasts. One day his strength
gradually forsook him, and he found himself sinking with fatigue. So
as the sun was setting he directed two brothers who stood by to go out
and shut the door of his cell after them. He told them that when the
time came for them to celebrate the matin hymns at dawn, they might
return. Unwillingly they went out, but did not go at once to rest; and
waited anxiously, concealing themselves by the master’s cell. After a
while, as they listened intent and could hear no movement of his body
nor any sound of his voice, correctly conjecturing what had happened,
they broke open the door, rushed in and lighted the light; and there,
the blessed soul having been transported to heaven, they found the
holy corpse supine. It lay as a celestial pearl neglected, but
hereafter to be placed with honour in the treasury of the King.”[466]

The spiritual unity which lies beneath the actions of Romuald should be sought in the reasons and temper of the hermit life. To perfect the soul for its passage to eternity is the fundamental motive. Monastic logic convinces the man that this can best be accomplished through withdrawal from the temptations of the world; and the hermit temper draws irresistibly to solitude. The only consistent social function left to such a man is that of turning the steps of his fellows to his own recluse path of perfection. Romuald’s life manifests such motives and such temper, and also this one function passionately performed. We see in him no love of kind, but only a fiery passion for their salvation. Also we see the absorption of self in self with God, the harsh intolerance of other men, the fierce aversions and the passionate cravings which are germane to the hermit life.

Physical self-mortification is the element of the hermit life most difficult for modern people to understand. Yet nothing in Romuald extorted more entire admiration from his biographer than his austerities. And if there was one man on earth whom Peter admired as much as he did Romuald, it was a certain mail-coated Dominicus, a virtuoso in self-mortification. He exhibits its purging and penitential motives. Scourging purifies the body from carnality; that is one motive. It also atones for sins, and lessens the purgatorial period after death; this is another. There is a third which is rooted rather in temperament than in reason. This is contrition; the contrite heart may love to flagellate itself in love of Him who suffered sinless.

Dominicus was surnamed Loricatus because he wore a coat of mail against the attacks of the devil through the frailties of the too-comfortable flesh. In his youth, family influence had installed him in a snug ecclesiastic berth. As he reached maturity and bethought himself, the sense of this involuntary simoniacal contamination filled him with remorse. He abjured the world and became a member of the hermit community of Fonte Avellana, where Damiani exercised the authority of prior. Yet the latter looked on Dominic as his master, whom he admired to the pitch of marvel, while regretting that he lacked himself the strength and leisure to equal his flagellations. So Peter was enraptured with this wonder of a Dominic, and wrote his biography, which deserved telling if, as Peter says, his entire life, his _tota quippe vita_, was a preaching and an edification, instruction and discipline (_praedicatio, aedificatio, doctrina, disciplina_).

One descriptive passage from it will suffice:

“I am speaking of Dominic, my teacher and my master, whose tongue
indeed is rustic, but whose life is polished and accomplished
(_artificiosa satis et lepida_). His life indeed preaches more
effectively by its living actions (_vivis operibus_) than a barren
tongue which inanely weighs out the balanced phrases of a bespangled
urbanity (_phaleratae urbanitatis_). Through a long course of gliding
years, girt with iron mail, he has waged truceless war against the
wicked spirits; with cuirassed body and heart always ready for battle,
he marches eager warrior against the hostile array.

“Likewise it is his regular and unremitting habit, with a rod in each
hand every day to beat time upon his naked body, and thus scourge out
two psalters. And this even in the slacker season. For in Lent or when
he has a penance to perform (and he often undertakes a penance of a
hundred years), each day, while he plies himself with his rods, he
pays off at least three psalters repeating them mentally
(_meditando_).

“The penance of a hundred years is performed thus: With us three
thousand blows satisfies a year of penance; and the chanting
(_modulatio_) of ten psalms, as has often been tested, admits one
thousand blows. Now, clearly, as the Psalter consists of one hundred
and fifty psalms, any one computing correctly will see that five years
of penance lie in chanting one psalter, with this discipline. Now,
whether you take five times twenty or twenty times five you have a
hundred. Consequently whoever chants twenty psalters, with this
accompanying discipline, may be confident of having performed a
hundred years of penance. Herein our Dominic outdid those who struck
with only one hand; for he, a true son of Benjamin, warred
indefatigably with both hands against the lawless rebels of the flesh.
He has told me himself that he easily accomplished a penance of a
hundred years in six days.”[467]

This loricated Dominic was conscious of his virtuosity. We find him at the beginning of a certain Lent, requesting the imposition of a penance of a thousand years! Again, he comes after vespers to Damiani’s cell to tell him that between morning and evening he has broken his record by “doing” eight psalters! And once more we read of his coming troubled to his master, saying: “You have written, as I have just heard, that in one day I chanted nine psalters with corporeal discipline. When I heard it, I turned pale and groaned. ‘Woe is me,’ I said; ‘without my knowledge, this has been written of me, and yet I do not know whether I could do it.’ So I am going to try again, and I shall certainly find out.”[468]

Dominic probably derived more pleasure than pain from his scourgings. For besides the vanity of achievement, and some ecstasy of contrition, the flesh itself turns morbid and rejoices in its laceration. Yet such austerity is pre-eminently penal, and is initially impelled by fear. With Dominic, with Romuald, with Damiani, the fear of hell entered the motives of the secluded life. To observe this fear writ large in panic terror, we turn to the old legend regarding the conversion of Bruno of Cologne, the founder of the Carthusian Order. The scene is laid in Paris, where (with much improbability) Bruno is supposed to be studying in the year 1082. One of the most learned and pious of the doctors of theology died. His funeral had been celebrated, and his body was about to be carried to the grave, when the corpse raised its head and cried aloud with a dreadful voice: “Justo Dei judicio accusatus sum.” Then the head fell back. The people, terror-stricken, postponed the interment to the following day, when again, as before, with a grievous and terrible voice the corpse raised its head and cried: “Justo Dei judicio judicatus sum.” Amid general terror the interment was again postponed to the next day, when, as before, with a horrible cry the corpse shrieked: “Justo Dei judicio condemnatus sum.”

At this, Bruno, impressed and terrified, said to his friends: “Beloved, what shall we do? Unless we fly we shall all perish utterly. Let us renounce the world, and, like Anthony and John the Baptist, seek the caves of the desert, that we may escape the wrath of the Judge, and reach the port of salvation.” So they flee, and the Carthusian Order, with its terrific asceticism, begins.[469]

This story, aside from its marvellous character, does not harmonize with the more authentic facts of Bruno’s life. It is, however, a striking expression of the ascetic fear; it also reflects psychologic truth. Who but the man himself knows the naughtiness of his own heart? its never-to-be disclosed vile and morbid thoughts? The modern may realize this. Hamlet did. And it was just such a phase of self-consciousness as the mediaeval imagination would transform into a tale of horror. Bruno himself had been a learned doctor, a teacher, and the head of the cathedral school at Rheims; he had been a zealous soldier of the Church. In all this he had not found peace. The profession of a doctor of theology, even when coupled with more active belligerency for the Church, afforded no certain salvation. The story of the Paris doctor may have symbolized the anxieties which dwelt in Bruno’s breast, until under their stimulus the yearnings of a solitary temper gathered head and at last brought him with six followers to Carthusia (_la grande Chartreuse_), which lies to the north of Grenoble. 1084 is the year of its beginning.

It was a hermit community, the brethren living two by two in isolated cells, but meeting for divine service in a little chapel. Camaldoli may have been the model. Bruno wrote no _regula_ for his followers, and the practices of the Order were first formulated by Guigo, the fifth prior, in his _Consuetudines Cartusiae_, about the year 1130.[470] These permit a limited intercourse among the brethren, for the service of God and the regulation of their own lives. Yet the broader object was seclusion. Not only severance from the world, but the seclusion of the brethren from each other, in solitary labour and contemplation, was their ideal. The asceticism of these _Consuetudines_ is of the strictest. And somehow it would seem as if in the Carthusian Order the frailties of the spirit and the lusts of the flesh were to be permanently vanquished by this set life of labour, meditation, and rigid asceticism. _Carthusia nunquam reformata, quia nunquam deformata_, remained true century after century. This long freedom from corruption was partly due to the lofty and somewhat exclusive character of the brotherhood. Carthusia was no broad way for the monastic multitude. Its monks were relatively few and holy, the select of God. Men of devout piety, they must be. It was also needful that they should be possessed of such intellectual endowment and meditative capacity as would with God’s grace yield provision for a life of solitary thought.

The intellectual piety of Carthusia finds its loftiest expression in the _Meditationes_ of this same prior Guigo,[471] the form of which calls to mind the Reflections of Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus. In substance they reflect Augustine’s intellectual devoutness and many of his thoughts. But they seem Guigo’s very own, fruit of his own reflection; and thus incidentally they afford an illustration of the general principle that by the twelfth century the Middle Ages had made over into themselves what they had drawn from the Fathers or from the pagan antique. Guigo’s _Meditations_ possess spiritual calm; their logic is unhesitating; it is remorselessly correct, however incomplete may be its premises or its comprehension of life’s data. Whoever wishes to know the high contemplative mind of monastic seclusion in the twelfth century may learn it from this work. A number of its precepts are given here for the sake of their illustrative pertinency and intrinsic merit, and because our author is not very widely known. He begins with general reflections upon Veritas and Pax:

“Truth should be set in the middle, as something beautiful. Nor, if
any one abhors it, do thou condemn, but pity. Thou indeed, who
desirest to come to it, why dost thou spurn it when it chides thy
faults?

“Without form and comeliness and fastened to the cross, truth is to be
worshipped.

“If thou speakest truth not from love of truth but from wish to injure
another, thou wilt not gain the reward of a truthspeaker but the
punishment of a defamer.

“Truth is life and eternal salvation. Therefore you ought to pity any
one whom it displeases. For to that extent he is dead and lost. But
you, perverse one, would not tell him the truth unless you thought it
bitter and intolerable to him. You do still worse when in order to
please men you speak a truth which delights them as much as if it
were lies and flattery. Not because it displeases or pleases should
truth be spoken, but as it profits. Yet be silent when it would do
harm, as light to weak eyes.

“Blessed is he whose mind is moved or affected only by the perception
and love of truth, and whose body is moved only by his mind. Thus the
body, like the mind, is moved by truth alone. For if there is no
stirring in the mind save that of truth, and none in the body save
that from the mind, then also there is no stirring in the body save
from truth, that is from God.

“Thou dost all things for the sake of peace, toward which the way lies
through truth alone, which is thine adversary in this life. Therefore
either subject thee to it or it to thee. For nothing else is left
thee.

“The lake does not boast because it abounds in water; for that is from
the source. So as to thy peace. Its cause is always something else.
Therefore thy peace is shifting and inconstant in proportion to the
instability of its cause. How worthless is it when it arises from the
pleasingness of a human face!

“Let not temporal things be the cause of thy peace; for then wilt thou
be as worthless and fragile as they. You would have such a peace in
common with the brutes; let thine be that of the angels, which
proceeds from truth.

“The beginning of the return to truth is to be displeased with
falsity. Blame precedes correction.

“In the cares which engage thee for thy salvation, no service or
medicine is more useful than to blame and despise thyself. Whoever
does this for thee is thy helper.

“Easy is the way to God, since it advances by laying down burdens.
Thou dost unburden thyself so far as thou deniest thyself.

“When anything good is said of thee, it is but as a rumour regarding
which thou knowest better.

“Consider the two experiences of filling and emptying (_ingestionis et
egestionis_); which blesses thee more? That burdens thee with useless
matters; this disburdens thee. To have had that is to have devoured it
altogether. Nothing remains for hope. So in all things of sense. They
perish all. And what of thee after these? Set thy love and hope on
what will not pass.

“Bestial pleasure comes from the senses of the flesh; it is diabolic,
a thing of arrogance, envy, and deceit; philosophic pleasure is to
know the creature; the angelic pleasure is to know and love God.

“When we take our pleasure from that from which brutes draw
pleasure--from lust like dogs, or from gluttony like swine--our souls
become like theirs. Yet we do not shudder. I had rather have a dog’s
body than his soul. It would be more tolerable if our body changed to
bestial shape, while our soul remained in its dignity, that is, in the
likeness of God.

“Readily man entangles himself in love of bodies and of vanity; but,
willy, nilly, he is torn with fear and grief at their dissolution. For
the love of perishable things is as a fountain of useless fears and
sorrows. The Lord frees the poor man from the mighty, by loosing him
from the fetter of earthly love.

“The human soul is tortured in itself as long as it can be tortured,
that is, as long as it loves anything besides God.

“Thou hast been clinging to one syllable of a great song, and art
troubled when that wisest Singer proceeds in His singing. For the
syllable which alone thou wast loving is withdrawn from thee, and
others succeed in order. He does not sing to thee alone, nor to thy
will, but His. The syllables which succeed are distasteful to thee
because they drive on that one which thou wast loving evilly.

“All matters which are called adverse are adverse only to the wicked,
that is, those who love the creature instead of the Creator.

“If in any way thou art tormented by fear, or anger or hate or grief
of any kind, lay it to thyself, that is, to thy concupiscence,
ignorance, or sloth. And if any one wishes to injure thee, lay that to
his concupiscence. Thy distress is evidence of thy sin in loving
anything destructible, having dismissed God. Thou dost grieve over the
ruined show; lay it to thee and thine error because thou hast been
cleaving to things that may be broken.

“He seeks a long temptation who seeks a long life.

“What God has not loved in His friends--power, rank, riches,
dignities--do not thou love in thine.

“Snares thou eatest, drinkest, wearest, sleepest in; all things are
snares.

“We are exiles through love and wantonness and inclination, not
through locality; exiles in the country of defilement, of dark
passions, of ignorance, of wicked loves and hates.

“In so far as thou lovest thyself--that is, this temporal life--so far
dost thou love what is transitory.

“Adverse matters do not make thee wretched, but rather show thee to
have been so; prosperity blinds the soul, by covering and increasing
misery, not by removing it.

“Every one ought to love all men. Whoever wishes another to show
special love toward him is a robber, and an offender against all.

“Mixed through this body, thou wast wretched enough; for thou wast
subject to all its corruptions, even to the bite of the flea or the
sorunculus. This did not suffice thee. Thou hast mixed thyself up with
other quasi bodies, the opinion of men, admiration, love, honour, fear
and the like. When these are harmed, pain comes to thee, as from
bodily hurt. Thy honour is hurt when contempt is shown thee; and so
with the rest. Think also thus regarding bodily forms.

“Unless thou hast despised whatever men can do to thwart or aid thee,
thou wilt not be able to contemn their disposition toward thee, their
hate and love, their opinions, good or bad.

“Why dost thou wish to be loved by men?

“Who rejoices in praise, loses praise.

“Who is pained or angered by the loss of any temporal thing, shows
himself worth what he has lost.

“No thing ought to wish to be loved as good, unless it blesses its
lover in the very matter for which it is loved. But no thing does this
if it needs its lover, or is helped by loving or being loved by
another. Most cruel, then, is the thing which wishes another to place
affection and hope on it when it cannot benefit that other. The devils
do this, who wish men to be engrossed in their service instead of
God’s. So cry to thy lovers, Cease, ye wretched, to admire or respect
or honour me; for I, miserable wretch, can neither aid myself nor you,
but rather need your aid.

“So far as in thee is, thou hast destroyed all men, for thou hast put
thyself between them and God, so that gazing on thee and ignoring God,
they might admire and praise thee alone. This is utterly profitless to
thee and them, not to say destructive.

“Whatever form thou dost enjoy is as the male to thy mind. For thy
mind yields and lies down to it. Thou dost not assimilate it, but it
thee. Its image endures, like an idol in its temple, to which thou
dost sacrifice neither ox nor goat, but thy rational soul and thy
body, to wit, thy whole self, when thou enjoyest it.

“See how, as in a wine-shop, thou dost prostitute thine as a venal
love, and to the measure of pay weighest thyself out to men. In this
wine-shop he receives nothing who gives nothing. And yet thou wouldst
not have that which thou dost sell, unless freely from above it had
been given to thee who gave nothing. Therefore thou hast received thy
pay.

“To be empty and removed from God is to make ready for lust.

“Who wishes to enjoy thee in thyself, deserves from thee the thanks of
flies and fleas who suck thy blood.

“This is the very sum of human depravity to forsake the better, which
is God, and to regard the lesser and cleave to them by delighting in
them--these temporalities!

“The beetle as it flies sees everything, and then selects nothing that
is beautiful or wholesome or durable, but settles down upon dung. So
thy soul in mental flight (_intuitu pervolans_) surveying heaven and
earth and whatever is great and precious therein, cleaves to none of
these, but embraces the cheap and dirty things occurring to its
thought. Blush for this.

“When thou pleadest with God not to take from thee something to which
thou cleavest by desire, it is as if an adulteress caught by her
husband in the act, should not ask pardon for her crime, but beg him
not to interrupt her pleasure. It is not enough for thee to go
wantoning from God, but thou must incline Him to save and approve the
things in which thou takest delight to thy undoing--the forms of
bodies, their savours and their colours.

“The poverty of thine inner vision of God, purblind as thou art,
although He is there, makes thee willing to go out of doors from thine
own hearth, refusing to linger within thyself, as in the dark. So thou
hast nothing to do but go gaping after the external forms of bodies
and the opinions of men. Thou dost carry thyself in this world as if
thou hadst come hither to gaze and wonder at the forms of bodies.

“May God be gracious to thee, that the feet of thy mind may find no
resting-place, so that somehow, O soul, thou mayest return to the Ark,
like Noah’s dove.

“Prosperity is a snare, adversity the knife that cuts it; prosperity
imprisons us from the love of God; adversity breaks the dungeon in
pieces.

“Since you are taken only by pleasure, you should shun whatever gives
it. The Christian soul is safe only in adversity. From what thou
cherishest God makes thee rods.

“The only medicine for every pain and torment is contempt for whatever
in thee is hurt by them, and the turning of the mind to God.

“As many carnal pleasures as thou spurnest, just so many snares of the
devil dost thou escape. As many tribulations--especially those for
truth’s sake--as thou dost flee, so many salutary remedies thou
spurnest.

“In hope thou mayest cherish the unripened grain; thus love those who
are not yet good, Be such toward all as the Truth has shown itself
toward thee. Just as it has sustained and loved thee for thy
betterment, so do thou sustain and love men in order to better them.

“You are set as a standard to blunt the darts of the enemy, that is,
to destroy evil by opposing good to it. You should never return evil
for evil, except very medicinally; which is not to return evil but
good.

“If to cleave to God is thine whole and only good, thine whole and
only evil is separation from Him.

“Who loves all will be saved without doubt; but who is loved by men
will not for that reason be saved.”

The unity of these _Meditations_ lies in the absolute manner in which the meditating soul attaches itself to God as its whole and only good. Herein Guigo’s thoughts are Augustinian. One notes their clear intellectual tone. Nothing lures the thinker from his aim and goal of God. He abhors whatever might distract him; and as to all except God and God’s commands, he is indifferent. Guigo detests impermanence as keenly as did the Brahmin and Buddhist meditators of India. He has as high regard as any Indian or Greek philosopher for a life of thought. But there are differences between the Carthusian prior and the Greek or Indian sage. Guigo’s renunciation does not (from his standpoint) penetrate life as deeply as Gotama’s; for Guigo renounces only things comparatively insignificant, so utterly transient are they, so completely they pale before the light of his goal of God. Therein shall lie clearer attainment than lay at the end of any Indian chain of reasoning. So note well, that Guigo, like other Christians, is not essentially a renouncer, but one who attains and receives.

The difference between him and the Greek is also patent. The source of his blue lake of thought is not himself, but God. Although calm and sustained by reason, he is rationally the opposite of self-reliant, and so the opposite of the ideal Stoic or Aristotelian. God is his Creator, the source of his thoughts, the loadstar of his meditations, the all-comprehending object of his desire.

We find in Guigo further specific elements of Christian asceticism, which sharpen his repugnances for the world of transient phenomena. Those phenomena mostly contain elements of sin: all pleasure is temptation and a snare; adversity keeps the soul’s wings trimmed true. So the main content of passing mortal life, while not evil in itself, is so charged with temptation and allure, that it is worthy only of avoidance. The transient, the physical, the brutal, the diabolic--one shades into the next, and leads on to the last. Have none of them, O soul! They are snares all.

Of course, Guigo has the specific monkish horror of sexual lust, that chief of fleshly snares. But he goes further. With him all particular, disproportionate love is wrong; love no one, and desire not to be loved, out of the proportionment of the common love which God has for all His creatures: so love you, and not otherwise. Others, even women, attained this standard. In the legend, St. Elizabeth of Hungary gives thanks that she loves her own children no more than others’. She is no mother, but a saint. So Guigo will love all--love indeed? one queries. Thus also will he have others hold themselves toward him, lest he be a stumbling-block in their or his salvation.

Yea, salvation! If indeed this monk shall not have attained that, of a truth he would be of all men most miserable--save for the quiet, thought-filled calm which is his inner and his veritable life. It is a calm not riven by the storms which drove the soul of Peter Damiani. God was not less to Guigo; but the temperaments of the two men differed. Not beyond or out of one’s nature can one love or yearn, or even know the stress of storm.