Coarse food, his body: and the poor, his store
Consum’d: while study morals gave, and lore.
Virtues he rear’d, check’d faults, encouraged right,
And law: in peace, not tumult, did delight.
Help to the wretch, to sinners pardon gives,
And, for his friend, his ardour ever lives.
Busy for man was Martha; Mary’s heart,
Intent on God, assumed the better part:
So ’twas in him; for God his soul possess’d,
Unmix’d: his friendless neighbour had the rest,
Rachael he lov’d: nor Leah’s hopes depriv’d
Of joy: another Jacob, doubly-wiv’d;
Dotes on the one, for beauty’s matchless grace;
Regards the other, for her numerous race.
And when dead, it was said of him,—
Poor and confin’d, and exiled from his see,
The virtuous prelate bore each injury:
Now rich, free, fix’d, his suff’rings are made even,
For Christ he follows, and inherits heaven.
His life, religion: and a judgment sound,
His mind adorn’d; his works his fame resound,
Reading his knowledge, and a golden mean
His words, arrang’d: in his decisions seen
Was law: severity his justice arm’d,
And graceful beauty in his person charm’d:
His breast was piety’s perpetual stand,
The pastor’s crosier well-became his hand:
The pope promotes him, but the earl deprives:
Through Christ to joy eternal he survives.
The contemporaries and associates in religion of this Peter, were Robert de Arbrisil,[521] and Bernard[522] abbat of Tyron, the first of whom was the most celebrated and eloquent preacher of these times: so much did he excel, not in frothy, but honeyed diction, that from the gifts of persons vying with each other in making presents, he founded that noble monastery of nuns at Font-Evraud, in which every secular pleasure being extirpated, no other place possesses such multitudes of devout women, fervent in their obedience to God. For in addition to the rejection of other allurements, how great is this! that they never speak but in the chapter: the rule of constant silence being enjoined by the superior, because, when this is broken, women are prone to vain talk. The other, a noted admirer of poverty, leaving a most opulent monastery, retired with a few followers into a woody and sequestered place, and there, “As the light could not be hidden under a bushel,” vast numbers flocking to him, he founded a monastery, more celebrated for the piety and number of the monks, than for the splendour and extent of its riches.
[A.D. 1119.] SERLO, ABBAT OF GLOUCESTER.
And, that England may not be supposed destitute of virtue, who can pass by Serlo, abbat of Gloucester, who advanced that place, almost from meanness and insignificance, to a glorious pitch? All England is acquainted with the considerate rule professed at Gloucester, which the weak may embrace, and the strong cannot despise. Their leader, Serlo’s axiom, was, “Moderation in all things.” Although mild to the good, he was fierce and terrific to the haughty; to corroborate which, I shall insert the verses of Godfrey the prior concerning him:—
The church’s bulwark fell, when Serlo died,
Virtue’s sharp sword, and justice’s fond pride:
Speaker of truth, no vain discourse he lov’d,
And pleas’d the very princes he reprov’d:
A hasty judgment, or disorder’d state
Of life, or morals, were his utter hate.
The third of March was the propitious day,
When Serlo wing’d, through death, to life his way.
[A.D. 1119.] DEATH OF ST. LANZO.
Who can in silence pass Lanzo, who flourished at that time, equal to any in sanctity? A monk of Clugny, and prior of St. Pancras[523] in England; who, by his worth, so ennobled that place with the grace of monastic reverence, that it might be justly declared the peculiar habitation of virtue. As nothing I can say will equal the merits of his life, I shall merely subjoin, in the language I found it, an account of his death; that it may plainly appear, how gloriously he had lived, who died so highly favoured.