Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 1.djvu/404

382 tongue which inanely weighs out the balanced phrases of a be-spangled urbanity (phaleratae urbanitatis). Through a long course of gliding years, girt with iron mail, he has waged truceless war against the wicked spirits; with cuirassed body and heart always ready for battle, he marches eager warrior against the hostile array.

"Likewise it is his regular and unremitting habit, with a rod in each hand every day to beat time upon his naked body, and thus scourge out two psalters. And this even in the slacker season. For in Lent or when he has a penance to perform (and he often undertakes a penance of a hundred years), each day, while he plies himself with his rods, he pays off at least three psalters repeating them mentally (meditando).

"The penance of a hundred years is performed thus: With us three thousand blows satisfies a year of penance; and the chanting (modulatio) of ten psalms, as has often been tested, admits one thousand blows. Now, clearly, as the Psalter consists of one hundred and fifty psalms, any one computing correctly will see that five years of penance lie in chanting one psalter, with this discipline. Now, whether you take five times twenty or twenty times five you have a hundred. Consequently whoever chants twenty psalters, with this accompanying discipline, may be confident of having performed a hundred years of penance. Herein our Dominic outdid those who struck with only one hand; for he, a true son of Benjamin, warred indefatigably with both hands against the lawless rebels of the flesh. He has told me himself that he easily accomplished a penance of a hundred years in six days."

This loricated Dominic was conscious of his virtuosity. We find him at the beginning of a certain Lent, requesting the imposition of a penance of a thousand years! Again, he comes after vespers to Damiani's cell to tell him that between morning and evening he has broken his record by "doing" eight psalters! And once more we read of his coming troubled to his master, saying: "You have written, as I have just heard, that in one day I chanted nine psalters with corporeal discipline. When I heard it, I turned pale and groaned. 'Woe is me,' I said; 'without my knowledge, this has been written of me, and yet I do not know whether I could do it.' So I am going to try again, and I shall certainly find out."