Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 1.djvu/306

284 cast upon its ignorance and corruption by bishops at the council which elected him and deposed his predecessor. In that deposition and election Rome had not acquiesced; and we read the words of the papal legate:

"'The acts of your synod against Arnulf, or rather against the Roman Church, astound me with their insults and blasphemies. Truly is the word of the Gospel fulfilled in you, 'There shall be many anti-Christs.' ... Your anti-Christs say that Rome is as a temple of idols, an image of stone. Because the vicars of Peter and their disciples will not have as master Plato, Virgil, Terence or the rest of the herd of Philosophers, ye say they are not worthy to be door-keepers because they have no part in such song.'"

The battle went against Gerbert. Interdicted from his archiepiscopal functions, he left France for the Court of Otto III., where his intellect at once dominated the aspirations of the young monarch. Otto and Gerbert went together to Italy, and the emperor made his friend Archbishop of Ravenna. The next year, 999, Gregory V. died, and the archbishop became Pope Sylvester II. For three short years the glorious young imperial dreamer and his peerless counsellor planned and wrought for a great united Empire and Papacy on earth. Then death took first the emperor and soon afterwards the pope-philosopher.

Gerbert was the first mind of his time, its greatest teacher, its most eager learner, and most universal scholar. His pregnant letters reflect a finished man who has mastered his acquired knowledge and transformed it into power. They also evince the authorship of one who had uniquely profited from the power and spirit of the great minds of the pagan past, had imbibed their sense of form and pertinency, and with them had become self-contained and self-controlled, master of himself and of all that had entered in and made him what he was. Notice how the personality of the writer, with his capacities, tastes, and temperament, is unfolded before us in a letter to a close friend, abbot of a monastery at Tours:

"'Since you hold my memory in honour, and in virtue of relationship declare great friendship, I deem that I shall be happy for your opinion, if only I am one who in the judgment of so great"