Chapter XXX: The Spell of the Classics (2)

Echoes of this same controversy--have they ever quite died away?--are heard in letters of the scholarly Peter of Blois, who was educated at Paris in the middle of the twelfth century, became a secretary of Henry Plantagenet and spent the greater part of his life in England, dying about the year 1200. He writes to a friend:

“You greatly commend your nephew, saying that never have you found a
man of subtler vein: because, forsooth, skimming over grammar, and
skipping the reading of the classical authors, he has flown to the
trickeries of the logicians, where not in the books themselves but
from abstracts and note-books, he has learned dialectic. Knowledge of
letters cannot rest on such, and the subtilty you praise may be
pernicious. For Seneca says, nothing is more odious than subtilty when
it is only subtilty. Some people, without the elements of education,
would discuss point and line and superficies, fate, chance and
free-will, physics and matter and the void, the causes of things and
the secrets of nature and the sources of the Nile! Our tender years
used to be spent in rules of grammar, analogies, barbarisms,
solecisms, tropes, with Donatus, Priscian, and Bede, who would not
have devoted pains to these matters had they supposed that a solid
basis of knowledge could be got without them. Quintilian, Caesar,
Cicero, urge youths to study grammar. Why condemn the writings of the
ancients? it is written that _in antiquis est scientia_. You rise from
the darkness of ignorance to the light of science only by their
diligent study. Jerome glories in having read Origen; Horace boasts of
reading Homer over and over. It was much to my profit, when as a
little chap I was studying how to make verses, that, as my master bade
me, I took my matter not from fables but from truthful histories. And
I profited from the letters of Hildebert of Le Mans, with their
elegance of style and sweet urbanity; for as a boy I was made to learn
some of them by heart. Besides other books, well known in the schools,
I gained from keeping company with Trogus Pompeius, Josephus,
Suetonius, Hegesippus, Quintus Curtius, Tacitus and Livy, all of whom
throw into their histories much that makes for moral edification and
the advance of liberal science. And I read other books, which had
nothing to do with history--very many of them. From all of them we
may pluck sweet flowers, and cultivate ourselves from their urbane
suavity of speech.”[203]

In another letter Peter writes to his bishop of Bath, as touching the accusation of some “hidden detractor,” that he, Peter, is but a useless compiler, who fills letters and sermons with the plunder of the ancients and Holy Writ:

“Let him cease, or he will hear what he does not like; for I am full
of cracks, and can hold in nothing, as Terence says. Let him try his
hand at compiling, as he calls it.--But what of it! Though dogs may
bark and pigs may grunt, I shall always pattern on the writings of the
ancients; with them shall be my occupation; nor ever, while I am able,
shall the sun find me idle.”[204]

It is evident how broadly Peter of Blois, or John of Salisbury, or the Chartrians, were read in the Latin Classics. Peter mentions even Tacitus, a writer not thought to have been much read in the Middle Ages. We have been looking at the matter rather in regard to poetry and eloquence--_belles lettres_. But one may also note the same broad reading (among the few who read at all) on the part of those who sought for the ethical wisdom of the ancients. This is apparent (perhaps more apparent than real) with Abaelard, who is ready with a store of antique ethical citations.[205] It is also borne witness to by the treatise _Moralis philosophia de honesto et utili_, placed among the works of Hildebert of Le Mans,[206] but probably from the pen of William of Conches, grammaticus post Bernardum Carnotensem opulentissimus, as John of Salisbury calls him.[207] In some manuscripts it is entitled _Summa moralium philosophorum_, quite appropriately. One might hardly compare it for organic inclusiveness with the Christian _Summa_ of Thomas Aquinas; but it may very well be likened to the more compact Sentences of the Lombard[208] which were so solidly put together about the same time. The Lombard drew his Sentences from the writings of the Church Fathers; William’s work consists of moral extracts, mainly from Cicero, Seneca, Sallust, Terence, Horace, Lucan, and Boëthius. The first part, _De honesto_, reviews Prudentia, Justitia, Fortitudo, and under these a number of particular virtues in correspondence with which the extracts are arranged. The _De utili_ considers the adventitious goods of circumstance and fortune.

The extracts forming the substance of this work were intelligently selected and smoothly joined; and the treatise was much used by those who studied the antique philosophy of life. It was drawn upon, for instance, by that truculent and well-born Welshman, Giraldus Cambrensis, in his _De instructione principum_, which the author wrote partly to show how evilly Henry Plantagenet performed the functions of a king. This irrepressible claimant of St. David’s See had been long a prickly thorn for Henry’s side.[209] But he was a scholar, and quotes from the whole range of the Latin Classics.

III

When a man is not a mere transcriber, but puts something of himself into the product of his pen, his work will reflect his personality, and may disclose the various factors of his spiritual constitution. To discover from the writings of mediaeval scholars the effect of their classical studies upon their characters is of greater interest than to trace from their citations the authors read by them. Such a compilation as the _Summa moralium_ which has just been noticed, while plainly disclosing the latter information, tells nothing of the personality of him who strung the extracts together. Yet he had read writings which could hardly have failed to influence him. Cicero and Seneca do not leave their reader unchanged, especially if he be seeking ethical instruction. And there was a work known to this particular compiler which moved men in the Middle Ages. Deep must have been the effect of that book so widely read and pondered on and loved, the _De consolatione_ of Boëthius with its intimate consolings, its ways of reasoning and looking upon life, its setting of the intellectual above the physical, its insistence that mind rather than body makes the man. Imagine it brought home to a vigorous struggling personality--imagine Alfred reading and translating it, and adding to it from the teachings of his own experience.[210] The study of such a book might form the turning of a mediaeval life; at least could not fail to temper the convulsions of a soul storm-driven amid unreconcilable spiritual conflicts.

One may look back even to the time of Alfred or Charlemagne and note suggestions coming from classical reading. For instance, the antique civilization being essentially urban, words denoting qualities of disciplined and polished men had sprung from city life, as contrasted with rustic rudeness. Thus the word _urbanitas_ passed over into mediaeval use when the quality itself hardly existed outside of the transmitted Latin literature. For an Anglo-Saxon or a Frank to use and even partly comprehend its significance meant his introduction to a new idea. Alcuin writes to Charlemagne that he knows how it rejoices the latter to meet with zeal for learning and church discipline, and how pleasing to him is anything which is seasoned with a touch of wit--_urbanitatis sale conditum_.[211] And again, in more curious phrase, he compliments a certain worthy upon his metrical exposition of the creed, “wherein I have found gold-spouting whirlpools (_aurivomos gurgites_) of spiritual meanings abounding with gems of scholastic wit (_scholasticae urbanitatis_).”[212] Though doubtless this “scholastic wit” was flat enough, it was something for these men to get the notion of what was witty and entertaining through a word so vocalized with city life as _urbanitas_, a word that we have seen used quite knowingly by the more sophisticated scholar, Peter of Blois.

Again, it is matter of common observation that a feeling for nature’s loveliness depends somewhat on the growth of towns. But mediaeval men constantly had the idea suggested to them by the classic poetry of city-dwelling poets. Here are some lines by Alcuin or one of his friends, expressing sentiments which never came to them from the woods with which they were disagreeably familiar:

“O mea cella, mihi habitatio, dulcis, amata,
Semper in aeternum, o mea cella, vale.
Undique te cingit ramis resonantibus arbos,
Silvula florigeris semper onusta comis.”[213]

These are little hints of the effect of the antique literature upon men who still were somewhat rough-hewn. Advancing a century and a half, the influence of classic study is seen, as it were, “in the round” in Gerbert.[214] It is likewise clear and full in John of Salisbury, of whom we have spoken, and shall speak again.[215] For an admirable example, however, of the subtle working of the antique literature upon character and temperament, we may look to that scholar-prelate whose letters the youthful Peter of Blois studied with profit, Hildebert of Lavardin, Bishop of Le Mans, and Archbishop of Tours. He shows the effect of the antique not so strikingly in the knowledge which he possessed or the particular opinions which he entertained, as in the balance and temperance of his views, and incidentally in his fine facility of scholarship.

Hildebert was born at Lavardin, a village near the mouth of the Loire, about the year 1055. He belonged to an unimportant but gentle family. Dubious tradition has it that one of his teachers was Berengar of Tours, and that he passed some time in the monastery of Cluny, of whose great abbot, Hugh, he wrote a life. It is more probable that he studied at Le Mans. But whatever appears to have been the character of his early environment, Hildebert belongs essentially to the secular clergy, and never was a monk. While comparatively young, he was made head of the cathedral school of Le Mans, and then archdeacon. In the year 1096, the old bishop of Le Mans died, and Hildebert, then about forty years of age, was somewhat quickly chosen his successor, by the clergy and people of the town, in spite of the protests of certain of the canons of the cathedral. The none too happy scholar-bishop found himself at once a powerless but not negligible element of a violently complicated feudal situation. There was the noble Helias, Count of Maine, who was holding his domain against Robert de Bellesme, the latter slackly supported by William Rufus of England, who claimed the overlordship of the land. Helias reluctantly acquiesced in Hildebert’s election. Not so Rufus, who never ceased to hate and persecute the man that had obtained the see which had been in the gift of his father, William the Conqueror. It happened soon after that Count Helias was taken prisoner by his opponent, and was delivered over to Rufus at Rouen. But Fulk of Anjou now thrust himself into this feudal _mêlée_, appeared at Le Mans, entered, and was acknowledged as its lord. He left a garrison, and departed before the Red King reached the town. The latter began its siege, but soon made terms with Fulk, by which Le Mans was to be given to Rufus, Helias was to be set free, and many other matters were left quite unsettled.

Now Rufus entered the town (1098), where Hildebert nervously received him; Helias, set free by the King, offered to become his feudal retainer; Rufus would have none of him; so Helias defied the King, and was permitted to go his way by that strange man, who held his knightly honour sacred, but otherwise might commit any atrocity prompted by rage or greed. It was well for Helias that trouble with the French King now drew Rufus to the north. The next year, 1099, Rufus in England heard that the Count had renewed the war, and captured Le Mans, except the citadel. He hurried across the channel, rushed through the land, entered Le Mans, and passed on through it, chasing Helias. But the war languished, and Rufus returned to Le Mans, or to what was left of it. Hildebert had cause to tremble. He had met the King on the latter’s hurried arrival from England for the war. Rufus had spoken him fair. But now, at Le Mans, he was accused before the monarch of complicity in the revolt. Quickly flared the King’s anger against the man whom he never had ceased to detest. He ordered him to pull down the towers of his cathedral, which rose threatening and massive over the city’s ruins and the citadel of the King. What could the defenceless bishop do to avert disgrace and the desolation of his beloved church? Words were left him, but they did not prove effectual. Rufus commanded him to choose between immediate compliance and going to England, there to submit himself to the judgment of the English bishops. He accepted the latter alternative, and followed the King, leaving his diocese ruined and his people dispersed. In England, Rufus dangled him along between fear and hope, till at last the disheartened prelate returned to the Continent, having ambiguously consented to pull down those towers. But instead, he set to work to repair the devastation of his diocese. The reiterated mandate of the King was not long in following him, and this time coupled with an accusation of treason. Hildebert’s state was desperate. His clergy were forbidden to obey him, his palace was sacked, his own property destroyed. Such were William’s methods of persuasion. Then the King proposed that the bishop should purge himself by the ordeal of hot iron. Hildebert, the bishop, the theologian, the scholar, was almost on the verge of taking up the challenge, when a letter from Yves, the saintly Bishop of Chartres, dissuaded him. At this moment, with ruin for his portion, and no escape, an arrow ended the Red King’s life in the New Forest. It was the year of grace 1100.

Now, what a change! Henry Beauclerc was from the first his friend, as William Rufus to the last had been his enemy. Hitherto Hildebert has appeared weakly endeavouring to elude destruction, and perhaps with no unshaken loyalty in his bosom toward any cause except his dire necessities. Henceforth, sailing a calmer sea, he repays Henry’s favour with adherence and admiration. He has no support to offer Anselm of Canterbury, still struggling with the English monarchy over investitures; nor has he one word of censure for the clever cold-eyed scholar King who kept his brother, Robert of Normandy, a prisoner for twenty-eight years till he died.

Hildebert had still thirty years of life before him; nor were they all to be untroubled. Shortly after the Red King’s death, he made a voyage to Rome, to obtain the papal benediction. To judge from his poems, he was deeply impressed with the ruins of the ancient city. Returning he devoted himself to the affairs of his diocese and to rebuilding the cathedral and other churches of Le Mans. In 1125, in spite of his unwillingness, for he was seventy years old, he was enthroned Archbishop of Tours, where he was to be worried by disputes with Louis le Gros of France over investitures. But he acquitted himself with vigour, especially through his letters. A famous one relates to this struggle of his closing years:

“In adversity it is a comfort to hope for happier times. Long has this
hope flattered me; and as the harvest in the fields cheers the
countryman, the expectation of a fair season has comforted my soul.
But now I no longer hope for the clearing of the cloudy weather, nor
see where the storm-driven ship, on whose deck I sit, may gain the
harbour of rest.

“Friends are silent; silent are the priests of Jesus Christ. And those
also are silent through whose prayers I thought the king would be
reconciled with me. I thought indeed, but in their silence the king
has added to the pain of my wounds. Yet it was theirs to resist the
injury to the canonical institutes of the Church. Theirs was it, if
the matter had demanded it, to raise a wall before the house of
Israel. Yet with the most serene king there is call for exhortation
rather than threat, for advice rather than command, for instruction
rather than the rod. By these he should have been drawn to agree, by
these reverently taught not to sheath his arrows in an aged priest,
nor make void the canonical laws, nor persecute the ashes of a church
already buried, ashes in which I eat the bread of grief, in which I
drink the cup of mourning, from which to be snatched away and escape
is to pass from death to life.

“Yet amid these dire straits, anger has never triumphed over me, that
I should raise a hue and cry against the anointed of the Lord, or
wrest peace from him with the strong hand and by the arm of the
Church. Suspect is the peace to which high potentates are brought not
by love, but by force. Easily is it broken, and sometimes the final
state is worse than the first. There is another way by which, Christ
leading, I can better reach it. I will cast my thought upon the Lord,
and He will give me the desire of my heart. The Lord remembered
Joseph, forgotten by Pharaoh’s chief butler when prosperity had
returned to him; He remembered David abandoned by his own son. Perhaps
He will remember even me, and bring the tossing ship to rest on the
desired shore. He it is who looks upon the petition of the meek, and
does not spurn their prayers. He it is in whose hand the hearts of
kings are wax. If I shall have found grace in His eyes, I shall easily
obtain the grace of the king or advantageously lose it. For to offend
man for the sake of God is to win God’s grace.”[216]

Hildebert was a classical scholar, and in his time unmatched as a writer of Latin prose and verse. Many of his elegiac poems survive, some of them so antique in sentiment and so correct in metre as to have been taken for products of the pagan period. One of the best is an elegy on Rome obviously inspired by his visit to that city of ruins:

“Par tibi, Roma, nihil, cum sis prope tota ruina.”

Its closing lines are interesting:

“Hic superûm formas superi mirantur et ipsi,
Et cupiunt fictis vultibus esse pares.
Non potuit natura deos hoc ore creare
Quo miranda deûm signa creavit homo.
Vultus adest his numinibus, potiusque coluntur
Artificum studio quam deitate sua.
Urbs felix, si vel dominis urbs illa careret,
Vel dominis esset turpe carere fide!”

Such phrases, such frank admiration for the idols of pagan Rome, are startling from the pen of a contemporary of St. Bernard. The spell of the antique lay on Hildebert, as on others of his time. “The gods themselves marvel at their own images, and desire to equal their sculptured forms. Nature was unable to make gods with such visages as man has created in these wondrous images of the gods. There is a look (_vultus_) about these deities, and they are worshipped for the skill of the sculptor rather than for their divinity.”[217] Hildebert was not only a bishop, he was a Christian; but the sense and feeling of ancient Rome had entered into him. Besides the poem just quoted, he wrote another, either in Rome or after his return, Christian in thought but most antique in sympathy and turn of phrase.

“Dum simulacra mihi, dum numina vana placerent,
Militia, populo, moenibus alta fui;

* * * * *

ruit alta senatus
Gloria, procumbunt templa, theatra jacent.”

The antique feeling of these lines is hardly balanced by the expressed sentiment: “plus Caesare Petrus!”[218] And again we hear the echo of the antique in

“Nil artes, nil pura fides, nil gloria linguae,
Nil fons ingenii, nil probitas sine re.”[219]

Hildebert has also a poem “On his Exile,” perhaps written while in England with the Red King. Quite in antique style it sings the loss of friends and fields, gardens and granaries, which the writer possessed while _prospera fata_ smiled. Then

“Jurares superos intra mea vota teneri!”

--a very antique sentiment. But the Christian faith of the despoiled and exiled bishop reasserts itself as the poem closes.[220] Did Hildebert also write the still more palpably “antique” elegiacs on Hermaphrodite, and other questionable subjects?[221] That is hard to say. He may or may not have been the author of a somewhat scurrilous squib against a woman who seems to have sent him verses:

“Femina perfida, femina sordida, digna catenis.

“O miserabilis, insatiabilis, insatiata,
Desine scribere, desine mittere, carmina blandia,
Carmina turpia, carmina mollia, vix memoranda,
Nec tibi mittere, nec tibi scribere, disposui me.

“Mens tua vitrea, plumbea, saxea, ferrea, nequam,
Fingere, fallere, prodere, perdere, rem putat aequam.”[222]

With all his classical leanings, the major part of Hildebert was Christian. His theological writings which survive, his zeal against certain riotous heretics, and in general his letters, leave no doubt of this. It is from the Christian point of view that he gives his sincerest counsels; it is from that that he balances the advantages of an active or contemplative life, the claims of the Christian _vita activa_ and _vita contemplativa_. Yet his classic tastes gave temperance to his Christian views, and often drew him to sheer scholarly pleasures and to an antique consideration of the incidents of life.

How sweetly the elements were mixed in him appears in a famous letter written to William of Champeaux, that Goliath of realism whom Abaelard discomfited in the Paris schools. The unhappy William retreated a little way across the Seine, and laid the foundations of the abbey of St. Victor in the years between 1108 and 1113. He sought to abandon his studies and his lectures, and surrender himself to the austere salvation of his soul, and yet scarcely with such irrevocable purpose as would rebuff the temperate advice of Hildebert’s letter proffered with tactful understanding.

“Over thy change of life my soul is glad and exults, that at length it
has come to thee to determine to philosophize. For thou hadst not the
true odour of a philosopher so long as thou didst not cull beauty of
conduct from thy philosophic knowledge. Now, as honey from the
honeycomb, thou hast drawn from that a worthy rule of living. This is
to gather all of thee within virtue’s boundaries, no longer
huckstering with nature for thy life, but attending less to what the
flesh is able for, than to what the spirit wills. This is truly to
philosophize; to live thus is already to enter the fellowship of those
above. Easily shalt thou come to them if thou dost advance
disburdened. The mind is a burden to itself until it ceases to hope
and fear. Because Diogenes looked for no favour, he feared the power
of no one. What the cynic infidel abhorred, the Christian doctor far
more amply must abhor, since his profession is so much more fruitful
through faith. For such are stumbling-blocks of conduct, impeding
those who move toward virtue.

“But the report comes that you have been persuaded to abstain from
lecturing. Hear me as to this. It is virtue to furnish the material of
virtue. Thy new way of life calls for no partial sacrifice, but a
holocaust. Offer thyself altogether to the Lord, since so He
sacrificed Himself for thee. Gold shines more when scattered than when
locked up. Knowledge also when distributed takes increase, and unless
given forth, scorning the miserly possessor, it slips away. Therefore
do not close the streams of thy learning.”[223]

Eventually William followed this, or other like advice. One sees Hildebert’s sympathetic point of view; he entirely approves of William’s renunciation of the world--a good bishop of the twelfth century might also have wished to renounce its troublous honours! Yes, William has at last turned to the true and most disburdened way of living. But this abandonment of worldly ends entails no abandonment of Christian knowledge or surrender of the cause of Christian learning. Nay, let William resume, and herein give himself to God’s will without reserve.

So the letter presents a temperate and noble view of the matter, a view as sound in the twentieth century as in the twelfth. And a like broad consideration Hildebert brings to a more particular discussion of the two modes of Christian living, the _vita activa_ and the _vita contemplativa_, Leah and Rachel, Martha and Mary. He amply distinguishes these two ways of serving God from any mode of life with selfish aims. It happened that a devout monk and friend of Hildebert was made abbot of the monastery of St. Vincent, in the neighbourhood of Le Mans. The administrative duties of an abbot might be as pressing as a bishop’s, and this good man deplored his withdrawal from a life of more complete contemplation. So Hildebert wrote him a long discursive letter, of which our extracts will give the thread of argument:

“You bewail the peace of contemplation which is snatched away, and the
imposed burden of active responsibilities. You were sitting with Mary
at the feet of the Lord Jesus, when lo, you were ordered to serve with
Martha. You confess that those dishes which Mary receives, sitting and
listening, are more savoury than those which zealous Martha prepares.
In these, indeed, is the bread of men, in those the bread of angels.”

And Hildebert descants upon the raptures of the _vita contemplativa_, of which his friend is now bereft.

“The contemplative and the active life, my dearest brother, you
sometimes find in the same person, and sometimes apart. As the
examples of Scripture show us. Jacob was joined to both Leah and
Rachel; Christ teaches in the fields, anon He prays on the mountains;
Moses is in the tents of the people, and again speaks with God upon
the heights. So Peter, so Paul. Again, action alone is found, as in
Leah and Martha, while contemplation gleams in Mary and Rachel.
Martha, as I think, represents the clergy of our time, with whom the
press of business closes the shrine of contemplation, and dries up the
sacrifice of tears.

“No one can speak with the Lord while he has to prattle with the whole
world. Such a prattler am I, and such a priest, who when I spend the
livelong day caring for the herds, have not a moment for the care of
souls. Affairs, the enemies of my spirit, come upon me; they claim me
for their own, they thieve the private hour of prayer, they defraud
the services of the sanctuary, they irritate me with their stings by
day and infest my sleep; and what I can scarcely speak of without
tears, the creeping furtive memory of disputes follows me miserable to
the altar’s sacraments,--all such are even as the vultures which
Abraham drove away from the carcases (Gen. xv. 11).

“Nay more, what untold loss of virtue is entailed by these occupations
of the captive mind! While under their power we do not even serve with
Martha. She ministered, but to Christ; she bustled about, but for
Christ. We truly, who like Martha bustle about, and, like Martha,
minister, neither bustle about for Christ nor minister to Him. For if
in such bustling ministry thou seekest to win thine own desire, art
taken with the gossip of the mob, or with pandering to carnal
pleasures, thou art neither the Martha whom thou dost counterfeit nor
the Mary for whom thou dost sigh.

“In that case, dearest brother, you would have just cause for grief
and tears. But if you do the part of Martha simply, you do well; if,
like Jacob, you hasten to and fro between Leah and Rachel, you do
better; if with Mary you sit and listen, you do best. For action is
good, whose pressing instancy, though it kill contemplation, draws
back the brother wandering from Christ. Yet it is better, sometimes
seated, to lay aside administrative cares, and amid the irksome nights
of Leah, draw fresh life from Rachel’s loved embrace. From this
intermixture the course to the celestials becomes more inclusive, for
thereby the same soul now strives for the blessedness of men and anon
participates in that of the angels. But of the zeal single for Mary,
why should I speak? Is not the Saviour’s word enough, ‘Mary hath
chosen the best part, which shall not be taken from her.’”

And in closing, Hildebert shows his friend the abbot that for him the true course is to follow Jacob interchanging Leah and Rachel; and then in the watches of his pastoral duties the celestial vision shall be also his.[224]

Could any one adjust more fairly this contest, so insistent throughout the annals of mediaeval piety, between active duties and heavenly contemplation? The only solution for abbot and bishop was to join Leah with Rachel. And how clearly Hildebert sees the pervasive peril of the active life, that the prelate be drawn to serve his pleasures and not Christ. Many souls of prelates had that cast into hell!

In theory Hildebert is clear as day, and altogether Christian, so far as we have followed the counsels of these letters. But in fact the quiet life had for him a temptation, to which he yielded himself more generously than to any of the grosser lures of his high prelacy. This temptation, so alluring and insidious, so fairly masked under the proffer of learning leading to fuller Christian knowledge, was of course the all too beloved pagan literature, and the all too humanly convincing plausibilities of pagan philosophy. Hildebert’s writings evince that kind of classical scholarship which springs only from great study and great love. His soul does not appear to have been riven by a consciousness of sin in this behoof. Sometimes he passes so gently from Christian to pagan ethics, as to lead one to suspect that he did not deeply feel the inconsistency between them. Or again, he seems satisfied with the moral reasonings of paganism, and sets them forth without a qualm. For there was the antique pagan side of our good bishop; and how pagan thoughts and views of life had become a part of Hildebert’s nature, appears in a most interesting letter written to King Henry, consoling him upon the loss of his son and the noble company so gaily sailing from Normandy in that ill-starred _White Ship_ in the year 1120.

Hildebert begins reminding the King how much more it is for a monarch to rule himself than others. Hitherto he has triumphed over fortune, if fortune be anything; now she has wounded him with her sharpest dart. Yet that cannot penetrate the well-guarded mind. It is wisdom not to vaunt oneself in prosperity, nor be overwhelmed with grief in adversity. Hildebert then reasons on the excellence of man’s nature and will; he speaks of the effect of Adam’s sin in loss of grace and entailment of misery on the human race. He quotes from the Old Testament and from Virgil. Then he proceeds more specifically with his fortifying arguments. Their sum is, let the breast of man abound in weapons of defence and contemn the thrusts of fortune; there is nothing over which the triumphant soul may not triumph.

“Unhappy he who lacks this armament; and most unhappy he who besides
does not know it. Here Democritus found matter for laughter,
Demosthenes (_sic_) matter for tears. Far be it from thee that the
chance cast of things should affect thee so, and the loss of wisdom
follow the loss of offspring. Thou hast suffered on dry land more
grievous shipwreck than thy son in the brine, if fortune’s storm has
wrested wisdom from the wise.”

After a while Hildebert passes on to consider what is man, and wherein consists his welfare:

“To any one carefully considering what man is, nothing will seem more
probable than that he is a divine animal, distinguished by a certain
share of divinity (_numinis_). By bone and flesh he smacks of the
earth. By reason his affinity to God is shown. Moses, inspired,
certifies that by this prerogative man was created in the image of
God. Whence it also follows for man, that he should through reason
recognize and love his true good. Now reason teaches that what
pertains to virtue is the true good, and that it is within us. The
things we temporally possess are good only by opinion (_opinione_,
_i.e._ not _ratione_), and these are about us. What is about us is not
within our _jus_ but another’s (_alterius juris sunt_). Chance directs
them; they neither come nor stand under our arbitrament. For us they
are at the lender’s will (_precaria_), like a slave belonging to
another.[225] Through such, true felicity is neither had nor lost.
Indeed no one is happy, no one is wretched by reason of what is
another’s. It is his own that makes a man’s good or ill, and whatever
is not within him is not his own.”

Then Hildebert speaks of dignities, of wife and child, of the fruits of the earth and riches--_bona vaga_, _bona sunt pennata haec omnia_. Men quarrel and struggle about all these things--_ecce vides quanta mundus laboret insania_.[226]

No one need point out how much more natural this reasoning would have been from the lips of Seneca than from those of an archiepiscopal contemporary of St. Bernard. One may, however, comment on the patent fact that this reflection of the antique in Hildebert’s ethical consolation reflects a manner of reasoning rather than an emotional mood, and in this it is an instance of the general fact that mediaeval methods of reasoning consciously or unconsciously followed the antique; while the emotion, the love and yearning, of mediaeval religion was more largely the gift of Christianity.