Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/173

161 consuetudinem sepius venandi non quasi apostolicus sed quasi homo ferus. Erat enim cogitio ejus vanum; diligebat collectio feminarum, odibiles aecclesiarum, amabilis juvenis ferocitantes. Tanta denique libidine sui corporis exarsit, quanta nunc (non?) possumus enarrare."

No need to draw further from this writing, which is characterized throughout by crass ignorance of grammar and all else pertaining to Latin. It has no individual qualities; it has no style. Leaving this example of illiteracy, let us turn to a man of more knowledge, Odo, one of the greatest of the abbots of Cluny, who died in the year 943. He left lengthy writings, one of them a bulky epitome of the famous Moralia of Gregory the Great. More original were his three dull books of Collationes, or moral comments upon the Scriptures. They open with a heavy note which their author might have drawn from the dark temperament of that great pope whom he so deeply admired; but the language has a leaden quality which is not Gregory's, but Odo's.

"Auctor igitur et judex hominum Deus, licet ab illa felicitate paradisi genus nostrum juste repulerit, suae tamen bonitatis memor, ne totus reus homo quod meretur incurrat, hujus peregrinationis molestias multis beneficiis demulcet."

And, again, a little further on:

"Omnis vero ejusdem Scripturae intentio est, ut nos ab hüjus vitae pravitatibus compescat. Nam idcirco terribilibus suis sententiis cor nostrum, quasi quibusdam stimulis pungit, ut homo terrore pulsatus expavescat, et divina judicia quae aut voluptate carnis aut terrena sollicitudine discissus oblivisci facile solet, ad memoriam reducat."