Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 1.djvu/289

CHAP. XI prayers to God, and beseech the divine mercy in behalf of all the other vices confessed in this letter.

A strange confession this—or, indeed, is it strange? This cowled Peter Damiani who passes from community to community, seeing more keenly than others may, denouncing, execrating every vice existent or imagined, who wears haircloth, goes barefoot, lives on bread and water, scourges himself with daily flagellations, urging others to do likewise,—this Peter Damiani is yet unable quite to scourge out the human nature from him, and evidently cannot always refrain from that jocularity and inepta laetitia for which the Abbess Hildegard also saw sundry souls in hell. Perhaps, with Peter, revulsions from the strain of austerity took the form of sudden laughter. His imagination was fine, his wit too quick for his soul's safety. His confession was no matter of mock humility, nor did he deem laughter vulgar or in bad taste. He feared to imperil his soul through it. Of course, in accusing himself of other, and as we should think more serious crimes—drunkenness, robbery, perjury—Peter was merely carrying to an extreme the monkish conventions of self-vilification.

If it appears from this letter that Damiani had been unable quite to scourge his wit out of him, another letter, to a young countess, will show more touchingly that he had been unable quite to fast out of him his human heart.

"'To Guilla, most illustrious countess, Peter, monk and sinner, [sends] the instancy of prayer."

"'Since of a thing out of which will issue conflict it is better to have ignorance without cost, than with dear-bought forgetting wage hard war, we prudently accord to young women, whose aspect we fear, audience by letter. Certainly I, who now am an old man, may safely look upon the seared and wrinkled visage of a blear-eyed crone. Yet from sight of the more comely and adorned I guard my eyes as boys from fire. Alas my wretched heart which cannot hold Scriptural mysteries read through a hundred times, and will not lose the memory of a form seen but once! There where the divine law remains not, no oblivion blurs vanity's image. But of this another time. Here I have not to write of what is hurtful to me but of what may be salutary for thee.'"