Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 1.djvu/317

CHAP. XII spirits and the attacks of evil thoughts; Augustine is brought in to expound, intently listened to, and discussed."

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."

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. 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