torial 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 sumamed 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 conununity 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
biogri^hy, which deserved telling if, as Peter says, his
entire life, his iota quippe vita, was a preaching and an
edification, instruction and discipline {praedicatio, aedificaUoy
doctrina, discipUna).

One descriptive passage from it will suffice :



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398 THE MEDIAEVAL MIND book in

''I am speaking of Dominic, my teacher and my master,
whose tongue indeed is rustic, but whose life is polished and
accomplished {artifidosa satis et kpida). Hb life indeed preaches
more effectively by its living actions ipiris operibus) than a barren
tongue which inanely weighs out the balanced phrases of a be-
spangled urbanity (phaleraiae urbanikUis). 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 imremitting 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 {mediiando),

"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 cxm-
fident of having performed a hundred years of penance. Herein
our Dominic outdoes those who struck with only one hand; for
he, a true son of Benjamin, wars indefatigably with both hands
against the rebellious allurements of the flesh. He has told me
himself that he easily accomplishes a penance of a hundred years
in six days." *

This loricMed 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

i Peter Damiani, VUae SS, Radulpki ei Domimci loricaU, cap. 8 (Migne i44f
col. X015).



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CHAP, xvn THE HERMIT TEMPER 399

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 cer-
tainly find out." ^

Dominic probably derived more pleasure tihan pain from
hb 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
p^ial, and is initially impelled by fear. With Dominic,
with Romuald, with Damiani, the fear of heU entered the
motives of the secluded life. To observe this fear writ large
in panic terror, we turn to the old legend regarding the con-
version of Bruno of Cologne, the founder of the Carthusian
Order. The scene is laid in Paris, where (with much im-
probability) Bnmo 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 judido 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 judido 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
Dd judido condemnatus sum."

At this, Bnmo, 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, b^ins.^

^Ibid. cap. 10 (Migne 144, col. 1015).

* This story is told in afl the early lives of Bnmo» the VUa aniifmor, the V4U
sitera, and the Vita ierHa (Migne, Pai. Lai. 153, coL 483, 493* and 535). These
lives, especially the Viia altera, are interesting illustrations of the ascetic spirit,
which, as might be expected, also moulds Bruno's thoughts and his understanding
of Scripture. All of which appears in his long ExposiUo in Psalmos (Migne, Pat,
Lai, 153). To us, for example, the note of the twenty-third (in the Vulgate the
twenty-second) psalm is love; to Bruno it is disdplinaiy guidance: the Lord



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400 THE MEDIAEVAL MIND book m

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 modem may realize this.
Hamlet did. And it was just such a phase of self-conscious-
ness 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 Bru^io's breast, until under their stimulus the
yeanrings 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. 1048
is the year of its beginning.

It was a hermit commimity, the brethren living two by
two in isolated cells, but meeting for divine service in a little
chapel. CamaldoU 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.^ 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 lust of the flesh were to be

guides me in Uie place of pasture, that is, He is my guide lett I go astray in the
Scriptures, where the souls of the faithful are fed ; I shall not want, that is, an under-
standing of them shall not fail me. Thy rod, that is the lesser tribulation, thy staff,
that is the greater tribulation, correct and chastise me.

^ Guigo was bom in 1083 at St. Romain near Valence, of noble family (Hke mott
monks of prominence). There was dose sympathy between him and St. Bernard,
as their letters show. Cf. posi. Chapter XVm.



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CHAP, xvn THE HERMIT TEMPER 401

permanently vanquished by this set life of labour, meditation,
and rigid asceticism. Carthusia nunquatn 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 ex-
pression in the Meditationes of this same prior Guigo,*
the form of which calk 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 erf 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 MediiaUones possess
spiritual calm ; their logic is imhesitating ; it is remorselessly
correct, however incomplete may be its premises or its com-
prehension 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 intrin^c merit, and because our author is not
very widely known. He b^ins 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 tnithspeaker
but die punishment of a defamer.

1 Migne 153, ooL 601-631.
VOL. I 2D



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402 THE MEDIAEVAL MIND book m

''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 spok^i, 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 aiwa)rs
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 la3dng down
burdens. So far then unburden thyself that, all things laid aside,
thou mayest deny 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 (*»-
gestionis et egestionis); which blesses thee more? That burdens
thee with useless matters; this disbiudens 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.



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CHAP, xvn THE HERMIT TEMPER 403

''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, i^y, 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 sucoeed 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 pain 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



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404 THE MEDIAEVAL MIND book m

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 corrections, even to the bite of the
flea or the sonmculus. Thb 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 for the very reason that 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, b the tldng 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 endiu'es, 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. There-
fore thou hast received thy pay.



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CHAP, xvn THE HERMIT TEMPER 405

"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 diurable, but settles down upon
dung. So thy soul in mental flight {intuUu pervcians) surveying
heaven and earth and whatever is great and precious therein,
cleaves to noive 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 some-
thing to which thou deavest 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 Plough
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 colomrs.

"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, reusing 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. Iliou 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 is the
battering-ram which breaks the dimgeon 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 spumest, 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 spumest.

"In hope thou mayest cherish the imripened grain; thus love
those who are not yet good. Be such toward all as the Truth



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4o6 THE MEDIAEVAL MIND book m

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 blimt the darts of the enemy,
that is, to destroy evil by opposing good to it. You should never
return evil for evil, except perhaps 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 Meditationes lies in the absolute
V 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 cjifference 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



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CHAP, xvn THE HERMIT TEMPER 407

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 witi 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, di^roportionate love is wrong;
love no one, and desire not to be loved, out of the pro-
portionment of the common love which God has for all His