Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 1.djvu/391

CHAP. XVI of him who, sore against his will, was the Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia.

"The solitary life is the school of celestial doctrine and the divine arts (artes divinae)," says Damiani, meaning every word. "For there God is the whole that is learned. He is also the way by which one advances, through which one attains knowledge of the sum of truth." To obtain its benefits, it must be led assiduously and without break or wandering abroad among men: "Habit makes his cell sweet to the monk, but roving makes it seem horrible.… The unbroken hermit life is a cooling refreshment (refrigerium); but, if interrupted, it seems a torment. Through continued seclusion the soul is illuminated, vices are uncovered, and whatever of himself had been hidden from the man, is disclosed."

Peter argues that the hermit life is free from temptations (!) and offers every aid to victory.

"The wise man, bent on safeguarding his salvation, watches always to destroy his vices; he girds his loins—and his belly—with the girdle of perfect mortification. Truly that takes place when the itching palate is suppressed, when the pert tongue is held in silence, the ear is shut off from distractions and the eye from unpermitted sights; when the hand is held from cruel striking, and the foot from vainly roving; when the heart is withstood, that it may not envy another's felicity, nor through avarice covet what is not its own, nor through anger sever itself from fraternal love, nor vaunt itself arrogantly above its fellows, nor yield to the ticklings of lust, nor immoderately sink itself in grief or abandon itself wantonly to joy. Since, then, the human mind has not the power to remain entirely empty, and unoccupied with the love of something, it is girt around with a wall of the virtues.

"In this way, then, our mind begins to be at rest in its Author and to taste the sweetness of that intimacy. At once it rejects whatever it deems contrary to the divine law, shrinks from what does not agree with the rule of supernal righteousness. Hence true mortification is born; hence it comes that man kissing the Cross of his Redeemer seems dead to the world. No longer he delights in silly fables, nor is content to waste his time with idle talk. But he is free for psalms and hymns and spiritual songs;