The Medieval Mind. Henry Osborn Taylor
were essential aids or sorely needed guides. With a true instinct the Middle Ages first of all looked within this mass of knowledge for guides to its mazes, seeking a plan or scheme by the aid of which universal knowledge might be unravelled, and then reconstructed in forms corresponding to even larger verities.[370]
II
The decades on either side of the year 1000 were cramped and dull. In Burgundy, to be sure, the energies of Cluny,[371] under its great abbots, were rousing the monastic world to a sense of religious and disciplinary decency. This reform, however, took little interest in culture. The monks of Cluny were commonly instructed in the rudiments of the Seven Arts. They had a little mathematics; bits of crude physical knowledge had unavoidably come to them; and just as unavoidably had they made use of extracts from the pagan poets in studying Latinity.[372] But they did not follow letters for their own sake, nor knowledge because they loved it and felt that love a holy one. Monastic principles hardly justified such a love, and Cluny’s abbots had enough to do in bringing the monastic world to decency, without dallying with inapplicable knowledge or the charms of pagan poetry.
Religious reforms in the ninth century had helped letters in the cathedral and monastic schools of Gaul. The latter soon fell back to ignorance; but among the cathedral schools, Chartres and Rheims continued to flourish. A moral ordering of life increases thoughtfulness and may stimulate study. Hence, in the latter part of the tenth century, the Cluniac reforms, like the earlier reforming movements, affected letters favourably in the monasteries. Here and there an exceptional man created an exceptional situation. Such a one was Abbo, Abbot of St. Benedict’s at Fleury on the Loire, who died the year after Gerbert. He was fortunate in his excellent pupil and biographer, Aimoin, who ascribes to him as liberal sentiments toward study as were consistent with a stern monasticism:
“He admonished his hearers that having cast out the thorns of sin, they should sow the little gardens of their hearts with the spices of the divine virtues. The battle lay against the vices of the flesh, and it was for them to consider what arms they should oppose to its delights. To complete their armament, after the vows of prayer, and the manly strife of fastings, he deemed that the study of letters would advantage them, and especially the exercise of composition. Indeed he himself, the studious man, scarcely let pass a moment when he was not reading, writing, or dictating.”[373]
It is curious to observe the unavoidable influence of a crude Latin education upon the most strenuous of these reforming monks. In 994 Odilo became Abbot of Cluny. After a most notable and effective rule of more than half a century, he died just as the year 1049 began. The closing scenes are typically illustrative of the passing of an early mediaeval saint. The dying abbot preaches and comforts his monks, gives his blessing, adores the Cross, repels the devil:
“I warn thee, enemy of the human race, turn from me thy plots and hidden wiles, for by me is the Cross of the Lord, which I always adore: the Cross my refuge, my way and virtue; the Cross, unconquerable banner, the invincible weapon. The Cross repels every evil, and puts darkness to flight. Through this divine Cross I approach my journey; the Cross is my life—death to thee, Enemy!”
The next day, “in the presence of all, the Creed is read for a shield of faith against the deceptions of malignant spirits and the attacks of evil thoughts; Augustine is brought in to expound, intently listened to, and discussed.”[374]
For Odilo, the Cross is a divine, not to say magic, safeguard. His prayer and imprecation have something of the nature of an uttered spell. No antique zephyrs seem to blow in this atmosphere of faith and fear, in which he passed his life, and performed his miracles before and after death. Nevertheless the antique might mould his phrases, and perhaps unconsciously affect his ethical conceptions. He wrote a Life of a former abbot of Cluny, ascribing to him the four cardinales disciplinas, in which he strove to perfect himself “in order that through prudentia he might assure the welfare of himself and those in his charge; that through temperantia (which by another name is called modestia), by a proper measure of a just discretion, he might modestly discharge the spiritual business entrusted to him; that through fortitudo he might resist and conquer the devil and his vices; and that through justitia, which permeates all virtues and seasons them, he might live soberly and piously and justly, fight the good fight and finish his course.”[375]
Thus the antique virtues shape Odilo’s thoughts, as seven hundred years before him the point of view and reasoning of Ambrose’s De officiis ministrorum were set by Cicero’s De officiis.[376] The same classically touched phrases, if not conceptions, pass on to Odilo’s pupil and biographer, the monk Jotsaldus, to whom we owe our description of Odilo’s last moments. He ascribes the four cardinal virtues to his hero, and then defines them from the antique standpoint, but with Christian turns of thought:
“The philosophers define Prudence as the search for truth and the thirst for fuller knowledge. In which virtue Odilo was so distinguished that neither by day nor night did he cease from the search for truth. The Book of the divine contemplation was always in his hands, and ceaselessly he spoke of Scripture for the edification of all, and prayer ever followed reading.
“Justice, as the philosophers say, is that which renders each his due, lays no claim to what is another’s, and neglects self-advantage, so as to maintain what is equitable for all.” [To illustrate this virtue in Odilo, the biographer gives instances of his charity, by which one observes the Christian turn taken by the conception.]
“Fortitude is to hold the mind above the dread of danger, to fear nothing save the base, and bravely bear adversity and prosperity. Supported by this virtue, it is difficult to say how brave he was in repelling the plots of enemies and how patient in enduring them. You might observe in him this very privilege of patience; to those who injured him, as another David he repaid the grace of benefit, and toward those who hated him, he preserved a stronger benevolence.” [Again the Christian turn of thought.]
“Temperance, last in the catalogue of the aforesaid virtues, according to its definition maintains moderation and order in whatever is to be said or done. Here he was so mighty as to hold to moderation and observe propriety (ordinem) in all his actions and commands, and show a wonderful discretion. Following the blessed Jerome, he tempered fasting to the golden mean, according to the weakness or strength of the body, thus avoiding fanaticism and preserving continency. Neither elegance nor squalor was noticeable in his dress. He tempered gravity of conduct with gaiety of countenance. He was severe in the correction of vice as the occasion demanded, gracious in pardoning, in both balancing an impartial scale.”[377]
III
A friend of Odilo was Gerbert’s pupil Fulbert, Bishop of Chartres from 1006 to 1028. His name is joined forever with that chief cathedral school of early mediaeval France, which he so firmly and so broadly re-established as to earn a founder’s fame. It will be interesting to notice its range of studies. Chartres was an ancient home of letters. Caesar[378] speaks of the land of the Carnuti as the centre of Druidism in Gaul; and under the Empire, liberal studies quickly sprang up in the Gallo-Roman city. They did not quite cease even in Merovingian times, and revived with the Carolingian revival. Thenceforth they were pursued continuously at the convent school of St. Peter, if not at the school attached to the cathedral. For some years before he was made bishop, the grave and kindly Fulbert had been the head of this cathedral school, where he did not cease to teach until his death. As bishop, widely esteemed and influential, he rebuilt the cathedral, aided by the kings of France and Denmark, the dukes of Aquitaine and Normandy, the counts of Champagne and Blois. His vast crypt still endures, a shadowy goal for thousands of pilgrim knees, and an ample support for the great edifice above it. Admiring tradition has ascribed to him even this glory of a later time.
From near and far, pious students came to benefit by the instruction of the school, of which Fulbert was the head and inspiration. Close was their intercourse with their “Venerable Socrates” in the small school buildings near the cathedral. From the accounts, we can almost see him moving among them, stopping to correct one here, or looking over the shoulder of another engaged upon a geometric figure, and putting some new problem. Among the pupils there might be rivalry, quarrels, breaches of decorum; but there was the master, ever grave and steadfast, always ready to encourage with his sympathy, but prepared