gilt cock on the belfry of the abbey. To observe their attention in recording eclipses, comets, and all remarkable phenomena of the atmosphere, one would suppose that they were writing the history of the seasons. Nothing embarrassed them in the natural or political order; for whatever seemed unaccountable and horrible to reason, was ascribed by them to the secret designs of God."* In describing the evils of their age, their intense sense of justice, writing as if before the divine altars, may have led them to adopt language, from which we can at present argue but little; for though they judged no man personally, they might freely condemn a general misery and it was kindred spirits to theirs which Dante had in view when he exclaimed, O clear conscience and upright! How doth a little failing wound thee sore.† The spirit with which these men wrote may be inferred from the circumstance of their having so often succeeded in concealing their names from posterity. They were content to be forgotten or unknown if they could but save their readers, unlike so many writers of later times, who are ever anxious to secure for themselves a name; and if they can but further this object, scruple not to excite the passions, and to expose their readers to eternal ruin! The author of the Imitation of Christ is unknown. Some ascribe it to Thomas à Kempis, others to the Abbot Gerson; and this diversity of opinion has been the source of long, and, as the Abbé de la Mennais says, useless controversies; "but no object," he observes, "is too frivolous for human curiosity. Immense researches have been made to discover the name of a poor solitary of the thirteenth century. What is the result of so many labors? the solitary has continued unknown; and the happy obscurity in which his life glided has protected his humility against our vain science." The historian of the Abbey of Jumièges is obliged to confess his inability to do justice to the admirable men who pursued learning and the arts within that cloister, "because," he says, "their modesty and humility rendered them unambitious of being known to posterity." "The monks," "The monks," says the Chronicle of Richarius, "greatly cherished St. Filibert, as being the most fervent disciple of the late St. Richarius. At that time faithful men, holy and good, took no great care to commit to writing the things which were done, because they only attended to this end, how they might deserve to be inscribed in the books of life; therefore we should not have known even the names of the abbots who succeeded, had not the venerable Abbot Angelran made a catalogue of them, thinking that such men ought to be remembered."§ And in the same manner Desguerrois, in his history of the Diocese of Troyes, observes of the ancients, that, "they were more desirous of being saints, than learn Michau sur le Caractère et l'Esprit des Chroniques du Moyen Age. Deshayes, Hist. de l'Abbaye de Jumièges, 154. ed historians, and that there is therefore much obscurity in their accounts of the early saints of God." A great theologian laments that Pagan authors, such as Diogenes Lærtius, and Suetonius should have given more exact histories of the philosophers and Cæsars than many Catholic writers have left of martyrs, virgins, and confessors.* The cloister had its poets too, but they sought not to follow that Theban eagle, "to walk," as Pindar says, "high in the paths of life.”† It was enough if they could compose some hymn or melody for the glory of God and the utility of the Church. The author of the sublime hymn Salve Regina is said to have been Herman, a Benedictine monk in the year 1059, who was altogether devoid of polished literature. The names of those who composed some others are unknown. “Whatever you do," says the father of the Scholastic Theology, "do all for future benefit, in expectation of the eternal recompense: a future, not a present recompense is promised to the saints; in heaven, not on earth, reward is promised to the just. What is to be given elsewhere must not then be expected here. Be dead to the world, and let the world be dead to you. As if dead, look upon the glory of the world; as if buried, be not careful for the world; as if dead, cease from earthly cares. Despise, living, what you cannot possess after death. Study nothing on account of praise, nothing on account of temporal opinion, nothing for the sake of fame, but all things on account of eternal life, which may he grant you who liveth in heaven blessed for ever and ever."§ What a contrast is here to the spirit of men who do nothing from these supernatural motives, whose writings, alms, and even prayers, are all for the sake of the world; and of whose devotional literature it may be said with truth, that "gainful merchandise is made of Christ throughout the live-long day!" The muse of Pindar would perhaps have disdained the sanctuary of the Christian soul, "Who of those that are destined to die would wish to cover in vain an inglorious old age without a name, sitting in darkness anάvτov кαλr äuμopos." This is a darkness in which the holy writers of past ages were willing to sit expecting the manifestation of the Son of God. "Unknown to the world," says Louis de Blois, "they conceal themselves in retreat. Hardly do men without perceive their interior application to the things of heaven, and their conversation so Christian, so heavenly, which they maintain with God; unless, indeed, they be men who have received from heaven the same grace, for they avoid letting appear without any thing extraordinary or singular. In the commerce of life they are gentle, beneficent, and full of sweet humanity; they study to become the most amiable of men, but in such a manner as to preserve themselves pure from all sin; they are full of indulgence for all men. Such are the obscure children of God, who never utter any words but those of humility, and who comport themselves always † Olymp. I. * Melchoir Canus, Lib, Il. de locis Theolog. Card. Bona de Divina Psalmodia, 406. § S. Anselmi Lib. Exhortationum. Olymp. I. in all things as if they were worthless, being often despised even by those who appear externally to have some sanctity."* Do not these inhabitants of the cloister seem like those of a higher world, to which the poet alludes: I might relate of thousands, and their names Angels, contented with their love in heav'n, Seek not the praise of men. Were these writers in the ages of faith deceived in their estimate of the value of human fame? Ah! there are some who seem to think so, though even there were heathen sages who abstractedly made the same. "Ornat hæc magnitudo animi," says Pliny, "quæ nihil ad ostentationem, omnia ad conscientiam refert." "Multi famam," he says again, "conscientiam pauci verentur." If fame were not vanity in itself, its capricious and unjust dispensation would prove it worthless. Pliny thought that the verses of Martial would not pass to posterity; "and yet," says the philosopher with an air of deep reflection, “he wrote as if they were to endure to future ages."§ They did endure, and will probably last with the world, while no one knows who were the authors of the two most sublime books that exist, the Poems of Homer and the Book of Job. How many holy wise men are forgotten! how many fools and villains immortalized! Ælian has immortalized the names of several great eaters. How many base calumniators of truth and goodness have we seen rise up whose volumes will descend to the latest posterity with the applause of a blind world, though Justice, if she had a voice on earth, would cry, "Cancell'd from heav'n and sacred memory If we turn now to consider the style of their compositions, we shall find that it corresponds with the motives which induced them to write: their standard seems to be expressed by Raban Maur, where he says, "Magis eligo sanctam rusticitatem, quam eloquentiam peccatricem." St. Gregory of Tours apologizes for having undertaken to write upon the glory of the confessors, acknowledging that he has no genius or eloquence to qualify him for such a task, and adding, of himself, “whom no worldly boasting hath lifted up to write, but whom shame admonished to be silent, the love and fear of Christ hath impelled to relate these things."** Nothing can be greater than his reluctance to presume to write concerning the miracles of St. Martin: he wishes that Severus or Paulinus were alive to continue their histories; but he is impelled to do it by a vision, and by reflecting that the Saviour * Louis de Blois, Institution Spirituelle, chap. xii. § 4. Epist. Lib. I. 22. ‡ Lib. III. 20. § Epist. Lib. III. 21. | Var. Hist. De Institutione Clericorum, Lib. III. 27. **De Gloria Confessorum Præfat. of the world chose poor illiterate men for his apostles, and therefore ne undertakes the task without being dissuaded by the conviction of his own rusticity.* It does not enter into their idea of writing to begin as if constructing a palace, by raising a vestibule of golden columns, and thus making the frontispiece beautiful; to their humble books nothing can be more simple than the entrance. "I have made a little treatise respecting the mode of preparing for a happy death, and I have said something respecting our heavenly country, and also concerning the divinity and the rational creature." It is in this style that Louis de Blois introduces one of his books. The prologue to the four books of Sentences, by the celebrated Peter Lombard, Archbishop of Paris, who was known by the title of the Master of the Sentences, begins with these words, "Desiring with the poor widow, to cast something out of our poverty into the treasury of the Lord, we have presumed beyond our strength, moved by the zeal of the House of God, opposing our faith to the errors of carnal and animal men." Dante alludes to this in describing him in the choir of Paradise: Peter, he that with the widow gave With the same simplicity they allude to the works of their contemporaries. Thus the blessed John of the Cross, Director of St. Theresa, says in one of his books, "I leave this matter to some one else more worthy: especially since our blessed Moth er, Theresa of Jesus, has written admirably on this subject; and I hope from the Divine goodness that her works will be printed and given to the public before long ;" they saw the Divine goodness and they trusted to it in every thing. Petrus Cellensis, Abbot of St. Remy, says, in a letter to a monk of St. Bertine, "You desire to have our letters, which, like useless feathers, are borne in every direction by the four winds of heaven, though you sit at the rich tables of the Augustines and Gregories and Jeromes, the Ambroses and Bedes and Hilaries and Origens, whose crumbs I am not worthy to pick up. If you are pleased with new things behold the works of Master Hugues and St. Bernard, of Master Gilbert and Master Peter, in which neither roses nor lilies are wanting; but our writings have no depth or fertility." The moderns, who so loved moral abstractions in their misguided desire to be spiritual that they would have us to believe them humble, while using the proudest words, will object to these passages, and accuse them of affectation; but yet a natural and unvitiated taste will agree with Pliny where he says, "Nescio quo pacto magis in studiis homines timor quam fiducia decet."|| A distinguished professor in the Academy of Paris has lately written a book, and styled himself on the title page "Philosopher." Epictetus would have taught him better, Mndaμov σɛavτὸν οἴπῃς φιλόσοφον. Τo their humility of style was added that certain tone of deep conviction and stability, amounting even to playfulness, which necessarily belongs to those who are established -In that holy faith Thus Petrus Cellensis, the Abbot of St. Remy, writes as follows: "Brother Nicholas, in jesting you have said the truth, when, in allusion to my name, Peter, you have called me a stone, and I grant you it suits me, if you understand constancy and not hardness, for I am by nature and profession, in age and in will, as well as in name, petrine, rocky, rooted and founded in the mountains of the holy authorities, and in the midst of the rocks, where mother Church builds her nest in the clefts and caverns." ""* Hence there is often more solid instructions in the mere titles of their works than we could gain from all the frothy contents of modern volumes, which are nothing to the touch but clouds and vapor. Such was that adopted by Rodolphe le Maître in 1635, expressing so much in few words, "Treatise on Catholic Constance, against the floating errors of this time." In later times an author would be anxious to add a long list of honorable distinctions to his name; where the most learned and illustrious writers of the middle age are contented to sign themselves, like St. Anselm, a monk and a sinner; the title by which St. Peter Damian was distinguished while he dwelt beside the Adriatic, in the house of our blessed Lady, as he reminds Dante on appearing to him in Paradise. It is remarked by Father Lewis of Grenada, that he, "into whose keeping, from the cross, the mighty charge was given,"might have called himself an Apostle, a Prophet, an Evangelist, and the son by adoption of the Virgin Mother ; but he passes in silence over all these magnificent titles, and calls himself the disciple whom Jesus loved. Thus, in ages of faith, to be his humble disciple was deemed more glorious than to be celebrated as an historian or orator, a poet, a general, or a king. On the other hand, the chronicles and lives written in the middle ages are simply written, and in an unguarded, artless style which requires a Catholic interpreter. Thus sentences, often follow sentences, apparently with but little, or even with a false connection; but here we must not, like the moderns, immediately commence a charge of error, of superstition, or of inhumanity. The author of an amusing history of Grenada, would lead his reader to form an uncharitable opinion of the illustrious Mariana, from his concluding the account of a loss sustained by the Christian army with the words, "but as these latter were chiefly people of low rank, baggage carriers, and such like, the loss was not of great importance." Similar to expressions in Froissart, which have involved him equally in the like charge. But in these instances do not the words merely express the fact? Is not the loss to an army of some great * Epist. Lib. VI. 23. Gouget. Biblioth. Françoise. Tom. xv. 357. |