History of My Calamities & Works 1 part 3/4

Thereupon, as one guilty and convicted, I was handed over to the abbot of Saint-Médard, who was present, and dragged to his cloister as to a prison; and at once the council was dissolved. But the abbot and monks of that monastery, supposing that I would henceforth remain with them, received me with the utmost exultation, and, treating me with all diligence, vainly strove to console me. O God, who judgest equity, with what gall of soul, with what bitterness of mind did I then in my madness arraign Thee, in my fury accuse Thee, often repeating that complaint of blessed Antony: "Good Jesus, where wast Thou?" But with how great a grief I seethed, with how great a shame I was confounded, with how great a despair I was distraught, I could then feel, but cannot utter.

I compared with those things which I had once suffered in my body how great were the things I now endured; and I deemed myself the most wretched of all men. Small did I count that earlier betrayal in comparison with this injury, and I lamented far more the loss of my reputation than of my body, since to the former I had come through some fault, whereas to this so manifest violence a sincere intention and the love of our faith had led me — which had compelled me to write.

But when all to whom report had carried this so cruel and ill-considered deed vehemently condemned it, each of those who had taken part, repelling the blame from himself, shifted it onto others, so that even our rivals themselves denied that it had been done by their counsel, and the legate before all detested above all else the envy of the French in this matter. He, at once led by repentance, after some days — when he had for a time, under compulsion, satisfied their envy — brought me out of the other monastery and sent me back to my own, where I found nearly all who were there already, as I mentioned above, hostile to me, since the foulness of their life and their shameless manner of living held me wholly suspect, as one whose grave reproaches they could not endure.

Now after a few months had elapsed, Fortune offered them an occasion by which to contrive my ruin. For by chance, as I was reading one day, a certain opinion of Bede came before me, in which, in his exposition of the Acts of the Apostles, he asserts that Dionysius the Areopagite had been bishop of Corinth rather than of Athens. This seemed greatly contrary to them, who boast that their Dionysius is that Areopagite, whom they profess his own deeds to have shown to have been bishop of Athens. When I had found this, I showed it, as if in jest, to certain of the brothers standing by — namely that testimony of Bede which was being cast up against us.

But they, greatly indignant, said that Bede was a most lying writer, and that they held their own abbot Hilduin to be a truer witness, who for the investigating of this had long traversed Greece, and, the truth of the matter being ascertained, had in the deeds of that man which he wrote utterly removed this doubt. Whereupon, when one of them pressed me with importunate questioning as to what seemed to me in this controversy — that is, between Bede and Hilduin — I replied that the authority of Bede, whose writings all the Churches of the Latins use, seemed to me the more acceptable.

At this they, fiercely inflamed, began to cry out that I had now plainly shown that I had always harassed that monastery of ours, and that now above all I had disparaged the whole realm, by depriving it of that honour in which it gloried uniquely, since I denied that their patron had been the Areopagite. But I replied that I had neither denied this, nor was it much to be cared about whether he was the Areopagite or from elsewhere, provided he had won so great a crown in God's sight. They, however, running at once to the abbot, reported what they had laid to my charge; he gladly heard this, rejoicing to gain some occasion by which to crush me — being one who, the more basely he lived than the rest, the more he feared me.

Then, having convened his council and gathered the brothers, he gravely threatened me, and said that he would send to the king in haste, to take vengeance on me, as one robbing him of the glory and crown of his realm. And he ordered that I be well watched in the meantime, until he should hand me over to the king; but I in vain offered myself to regular discipline, if I had committed any fault.

Then, recoiling violently from their wickedness — for I had now long endured so adverse a fortune, and was utterly in despair, as though the whole world had conspired against me — with the consent of certain brethren who pitied me and the support of some of our disciples, I fled away secretly by night, and withdrew to the land of Count Theobald, close at hand, where I had earlier stayed in a cell. The count himself was somewhat known to me, and he felt deep compassion for the oppressions of mine which he had heard about. There I began to dwell in the castle of Provins, namely in a certain cell of the monks of Troyes, whose prior had earlier been a close friend of mine and had loved me greatly; he, rejoicing greatly at my coming, attended to me with all diligence.

Now it happened one day that our abbot came to that very castle to visit the aforesaid count on certain of his own affairs; learning this, I went to the count together with that prior, asking him to intercede for me with our abbot, that he might release me and grant me leave to live the monastic life wherever a suitable place might present itself to me. The abbot, however, and those who were with him, laid the matter before their council, intending to give the count their answer on this on that very day before they departed. But once the deliberation had begun, it seemed to them that I wished to pass over to another abbey, and that this would be an immense disgrace to their own.

For they reckoned it the greatest glory to themselves that at my conversion I had turned aside to them, as though scorning all other abbeys; and now they said that the gravest reproach would hang over them if, having cast them off, I should pass over to others. Wherefore they would in no way listen either to me or to the count on this matter; rather they at once threatened me that, unless I returned quickly, they would excommunicate me, and they forbade the prior to whom I had fled, in every way, ever again to keep me, unless he were willing to share in the excommunication. Hearing this, both the prior himself and I were greatly distressed. The abbot, however, departing in this obstinacy, died a few days later.

When another had succeeded him, I approached him, together with the bishop of Meaux, that he might grant me what I had sought from his predecessor. When at first he too would not agree to this, afterward, through the intervention of certain friends of ours, I appealed to the king and his council on this matter; and thus I obtained what I wanted. For Stephen, then the king's steward, calling the abbot and his intimates aside, asked them why they wished to keep me against my will, since by it they could easily incur scandal and gain no advantage, seeing that my life and theirs could in no way agree.

Now I knew that the judgment of the royal council in this was that, the less that abbey was bound by the Rule, the more it would be subject and useful to the king, namely as regards temporal profit; whence I had believed I would easily gain the assent of the king and his men; and so it came to pass. But lest our monastery should lose the boasting it had over me, they granted me leave to pass over to whatever solitude I wished, provided only that I subjected myself to no abbey; and this was assented to and confirmed by both parties in the presence of the king and his men.

I therefore betook myself to a certain solitude in the district of Troyes, known to me earlier, and there, with land granted to me by certain persons, with the assent of the bishop of the land I first built a small oratory of reeds and thatch in the name of the holy Trinity; where, lying hidden with a certain clerk of ours, I could truly sing to the Lord that word:

"Behold, I have fled afar off, and have remained in the wilderness." When the scholars learned of this, they began to flock together from all sides, and, leaving cities and towns, to dwell in the wilderness, and to build themselves small huts instead of spacious houses, and to live on wild herbs and coarse bread instead of dainty foods, and to gather themselves straw and thatch instead of soft beds, and to raise clods of earth instead of tables, so that you would truly believe them to be imitating those earlier philosophers, of whom Jerome too, in his second book Against Jovinian, records with these words: "Through the five senses, as through certain windows, vices find their entrance to the soul. The metropolis and citadel of the mind cannot be captured unless the enemy army bursts in through the gates..."

"If a man takes delight in the games of the circus, in the contests of athletes, in the agility of actors, in the forms of women, in the splendor of gems, of garments, and other things of this kind, the soul's freedom is captured through the windows of the eyes, and that prophetic word is fulfilled: Death has come up through our windows... Therefore, when through these gates, like certain wedges of disturbances, they have entered into the citadel of our mind, where will freedom be? where its fortitude? where the thought of God? Especially when touch paints for itself even past pleasures, and by the recollection of vices compels the soul to suffer with them and in a certain manner to enact what it does not perform."

"Invited, then, by these reasons, many of the philosophers forsook the throngs of cities and their suburban gardens, where there are watered fields and the foliage of trees and the whispering of birds, the mirror of a spring, a murmuring brook, and many enticements of eyes and ears, lest through luxury and an abundance of plenty the soul's fortitude should grow soft and its chastity be violated. For it is useless to see often the things by which you were once captured, and to entrust yourself to the experience of those things from which you can with difficulty keep free. For the Pythagoreans too, shunning crowds of this kind, were accustomed to dwell in solitude and in desert places..."

"But Plato himself too, though he was rich, and Diogenes trampled his couch with muddy feet, in order that he might be free for philosophy chose the country estate of the Academy, far from the city, not only deserted but also pestilential: so that by the care and constant presence of disease the assaults of lust might be broken, and his disciples might feel no other pleasure than that of the things they were learning." Such a life, too, the sons of the prophets, who clung to Elisha, are reported to have led; concerning whom Jerome himself also, as if concerning the monks of that age, writes thus among other things to Rusticus the monk:

"The sons of the prophets, whom we read of in the Old Testament as monks, built themselves little huts near the streams of the Jordan, and, forsaking the crowds and cities, lived on barley-meal and wild herbs." Such disciples of ours, building their little huts there above the river Ardusson, seemed hermits rather than scholars. But the greater the confluence of scholars to that place, and the harder the life they endured under my teaching, the more my rivals reckoned it glorious for me and shameful for themselves. And they, having done against me everything they could, grieved that all things worked together for my good; and so, according to that word of Jerome: "Me, far removed from cities, the forum, lawsuits, and crowds, even as Quintilian says,

envy found me lurking." For, secretly complaining and groaning within themselves, they said: "Behold, the whole world has gone after him; we have gained nothing by persecuting him, but rather have made him more glorious. We strove to extinguish his name, but rather have kindled it. Behold, in the cities the scholars have all necessities at hand, yet, despising the delights of city life, they flock together to the destitution of the wilderness and willingly become wretched." But at that time it was above all an intolerable poverty that drove me to the governance of a school, since I "was not able to dig, and was ashamed to beg." Recurring therefore to the art I knew, I was compelled to the office of the tongue instead of the labor of the hands.

The scholars, moreover, of their own accord prepared for me whatever was needful, both in food and in clothing and in the cultivation of the fields or in the expenses of buildings, so that no domestic care might hold me back from study. But since our oratory could not hold even a small portion of them, they of necessity enlarged it, and built it better with stones and timber. And since it had been founded in honor of the holy Trinity and afterward dedicated, yet because there, a fugitive and now in despair, I had somewhat breathed again through the grace of divine consolation, in memory of this benefit I named it the Paraclete.

Many who heard this received it not without great astonishment, and not a few violently calumniated it, saying that it was not lawful to assign any church to the Holy Spirit specially, rather than to God the Father; but either to the Son alone, or to the whole Trinity together, according to ancient custom. To this calumny they were chiefly led by this error: that they believed there to be no difference between the Paraclete and the Spirit Paraclete, whereas the Trinity itself, and any person in the Trinity, just as it is called God or Helper, so too is rightly called Paraclete, that is, Comforter, according to that word of the Apostle:

"Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all consolation, who comforts us in all our tribulation," and according to what the Truth says: "And He will give you another Paraclete." What too prevents — since every Church is consecrated alike in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and there is among them no diverse possession in anything — that the house of the Lord should not be ascribed to the Father or to the Holy Spirit as it is to the Son? Who would presume to scrape from the front of the vestibule the title of Him whose the house itself is?

Or, since the Son offered Himself in sacrifice to the Father, and accordingly in the celebrations of Masses prayers are directed specially to the Father and the immolation of the host takes place, why should not the altar be seen to belong especially to Him to whom supplication and sacrifice are chiefly offered? Is the altar more rightly to be called His who is sacrificed, or His to whom it is sacrificed? Or will anyone declare it better to be the altar of the Lord's cross or sepulcher, or of blessed Michael or John or Peter or any saint — who are neither sacrificed there nor have sacrifice offered to them nor have supplications made to them? Indeed, not even among idolaters were altars or temples said to belong to any save those to whom they themselves intended to render sacrifice and homage.

But perhaps someone may say that for this reason neither churches nor altars are to be dedicated to the Father, because there exists no deed of His that confers on Him a special solemnity. But this reasoning surely takes this away from the Trinity itself, and does not take it away from the Holy Spirit, since the Spirit too, from His coming, has His own solemnity of Pentecost, just as the Son, from His, has the festival of His nativity; for as the Son was sent into the world, so too the Holy Spirit, sent into the disciples, claims for Himself His own solemnity. To Him also, more probably than to any of the other persons, a temple seems to be ascribed, if we attend more carefully to apostolic authority and to the operation of the Spirit Himself.

For the Apostle ascribes a special temple specially to none of the three persons except the Holy Spirit; for he does not say the temple of the Father, or the temple of the Son, as he says the temple of the Holy Spirit, in the first epistle to the Corinthians, writing thus: "He who cleaves to the Lord is one Spirit." Again: "Do you not know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?" Who too does not know that the divine sacraments of the benefits which are wrought in the Church are specially ascribed to the operation of divine grace, which is understood to be the Holy Spirit? For of water and the Holy Spirit we are reborn in baptism, and then first are we constituted, as it were, a special temple to God.

In confirmation too the sevenfold grace of the Spirit is bestowed, by which the temple of God itself is adorned and dedicated. What wonder, then, if to that person to whom the Apostle specially attributes a spiritual temple, we assign a bodily one? Or of what person is the church more rightly said to be than of Him to whose operation all the benefits ministered in the church are specially assigned? Yet we do not so conjecture this as to confess that, in first calling our oratory the Paraclete, we dedicated it to one person; but for the cause which we have given above, namely in memory of our consolation — although, if we had done it in whatever manner it is believed, it would not be contrary to reason, though unknown to custom.

But in this place, while I lay hidden in body, yet my fame at that time wandered over the whole world above all, and, quite retaining the likeness of that poetic figment which is called the Horse — namely, that it has very much of voice but nothing of substance — my former rivals, since by themselves they now availed less, stirred up against me certain new apostles, in whom the world placed great trust; one of whom boasted that he had revived the life of the regular canons, the other that of the monks.

These, running about through the world preaching and shamelessly gnawing at me as much as they could, made me for a time not a little contemptible both to certain ecclesiastical and to secular powers, and spread abroad such sinister things about both my faith and my life, that they turned away from me even the chief of our friends; and if any still retained anything of their former love toward me, they themselves dissembled it in every way for fear of those men. God Himself is my witness that, as often as I knew some assembly of ecclesiastical persons to be convened, I believed it was done for my condemnation. Forthwith stunned, as by the stroke of a thunderbolt falling upon me, I expected to be dragged, as a heretic or profane person, into councils or synagogues.

And — to draw a comparison from the flea to the lion, from the ant to the elephant — my rivals persecuted me with no milder spirit than the heretics once persecuted blessed Athanasius. Often, God knows, I fell into such great despair that I planned, having passed beyond the boundaries of Christendom, to cross over to the heathen, and there to live as a Christian quietly among the enemies of Christ, under whatever compact of tribute. These I believed I would have the more favorable to me, the less they suspected me to be a Christian on account of the crime laid upon me, and on this account believed I could the more easily be inclined to their sect.

But while I was ceaselessly afflicted with such great disturbances, and this last counsel remained to me — that I should flee to Christ among the enemies of Christ — having obtained a certain opportunity by which I believed I might somewhat escape these snares, I fell among Christians and monks far more savage and worse than the heathen. For there was in Lesser Brittany, in the bishopric of Vannes, a certain abbey of Saint Gildas of Rhuys, left desolate by the death of its shepherd. To this the harmonious election of the brethren, with the assent of the prince of the land, called me, and easily obtained this from our abbot and brethren; and thus the envy of the Franks drove me out to the West, as the envy of the Romans drove out Jerome to the East.

For never, God knows, would I have agreed to this thing, except in order that, in whatever way, I might escape, as I said, these oppressions which I unceasingly endured. For the land was barbarous and the language of the land unknown to me, and the base and untamable life of those monks was notorious to almost all, and the people of that land inhuman and unruly. As, therefore, one who, terrified by the sword hanging over him, hurls himself into a precipice, and that he may put off one death for a moment of time incurs another, so I knowingly betook myself from one peril into another; and there, by the waves of the dreadful-sounding Ocean, since the farthest end of the land offered me no further flight, I often pondered in my prayers that word:

"From the ends of the earth I have cried to You, while my heart was in anguish." With how great anguish that undisciplined congregation of brethren, which I had also undertaken to govern, tormented my heart day and night, while I weighed the perils both of my soul and of my body, I think can now be hidden from no one. For I held it certain that, if I tried to compel them to the regular life which they had professed, I could not live; and if I did not do this as far as I was able, I should be damned.

That abbey too a certain tyrant, most powerful in that land, had now long subjugated to himself, having seized the opportunity from the disorder of the monastery itself, so that he had reduced all the places adjacent to the monastery to his own uses, and harassed the monks themselves with heavier exactions than tributary Jews. The monks pressed me for their daily necessities, since they had nothing in common which I might administer to them, but each one supported himself and his concubines, with his sons or daughters, from his own former purses.

They rejoiced that I was anxious over this, and they themselves also stole and carried off what they could, so that, when I should fail in this administration, I might be compelled either to cease from discipline or to withdraw altogether. But since the whole barbarism of that land was alike lawless and undisciplined, there were none of the men to whose help I could flee, since I differed alike from the morals of all. From without that tyrant and his henchmen continually oppressed me; within, the brethren ceaselessly plotted against me, so that the thing itself showed that word of the Apostle to be said specially of me: "Without were fightings, within were fears."

I considered and bewailed how useless and wretched a life I was leading, and how unfruitfully I lived both for myself and for others, and how much I had earlier profited the clerks, and that now, having dismissed them for the sake of the monks, I had no fruit either in the former or in the monks, and how ineffectual I was rendered in all my undertakings and endeavors; so that now in all things that word might most rightly be cast in my teeth: "This man began to build, and was not able to finish." I despaired utterly, when I recalled what I had fled and considered what I had run into; and, reckoning my former troubles as now nothing, I frequently groaned within myself, saying:

"Deservedly do I suffer these things, who, forsaking the Paraclete, that is the Comforter, thrust myself into certain desolation, and, desiring to avoid threats, fled to certain perils." But that which tormented me most was that, having abandoned our oratory, I could not provide for the celebration of the divine office as I ought, since the excessive poverty of the place scarcely sufficed for the necessity of a single man. But the true Paraclete Himself brought me, most desolate above all in this, true consolation, and provided for His own oratory as He ought.

For it happened that our abbot — namely of Saint Denis — acquired by whatever means that aforesaid abbey of Argenteuil, in which our companion, now in Christ a sister rather than a wife, Heloise, had taken the religious habit, as belonging of old to the right of his monastery, and violently expelled from there the convent of nuns, where that companion of ours held the office of prioress. And when they were dispersed as exiles into various places, I understood that an opportunity had been offered me by the Lord by which I might provide for our oratory. Returning thither, therefore, I invited her, with certain others of the same congregation who clung to her, to the aforesaid oratory;

and when they had been brought there, I conceded and gave to them the oratory itself with all things belonging to it; and afterward Pope Innocent the Second, with the assent and intervention of the bishop of the land, confirmed by privilege that very donation of ours to them and their successors in perpetuity. And they, who at first there endured a needy life and were for a time greatly desolate, the regard of divine mercy, which they devoutly served, in a short while consoled, and showed itself to them too a true Paraclete, and made the surrounding peoples merciful and favorable toward them. And more, God knows, as I judge, they were multiplied in earthly goods in one year than I should have been in a hundred had I remained there;

for inasmuch as the female sex is the weaker, so much the more is their destitution the more pitiable and easily moves human affections, and their virtue is the more pleasing both to God and to men. And the Lord granted such grace in the eyes of all to that sister of ours who presided over the rest, that the bishops loved her as a daughter, the abbots as a sister, the laity as a mother; and all alike admired her religion, prudence, and in all things the incomparable gentleness of her patience. And the more rarely she permitted herself to be seen — namely that, with her chamber closed, she might more purely be free for holy meditations and prayers — the more ardently did those who were without entreat her presence and the counsels of her spiritual converse.

But since all their neighbors vehemently blamed me that I provided for their need less than I could and ought, and that I might easily avail at least by our preaching, I began to return to them more often, that I might in some way succor them. In this the murmur of envy was not wanting to me, and what sincere charity compelled me to do, the wonted depravity of detractors most shamelessly accused, saying that I was still held by a certain delight of carnal concupiscence, by which I could scarcely or never endure the absence of my former beloved. And often, turning over within myself that complaint of blessed Jerome, in which, writing to Asella concerning feigned friends, he says: