Evidently Vilgard's profane studies made him a heretic. But, ordinarily, the Italians with their antique descended temperament were not troubled in the observance and the expression of their Faith by the paganism of their intellectual tastes. Such tastes did not produce open heretics in Italy in the eleventh century any more than in the fifteenth. A pagan disposition seldom prevented an Italian from being a good Catholic.
Yet the monastic spirit in Italy, as elsewhere, in the eleventh century defied and condemned the pagan literature, and in fact all Latin studies beyond the elements of grammar. The protest of the monk or hermit might represent his individual ignorance of classic literature; or, as in the case of Peter Damiani, the ascetic soul is horrified at the seductive nature of the pagan sweets which it knows too well. Peter indeed could say in his sonorous Latin: "Olim mihi Tullius dulcescebat, blandiebantur carmina poetarum, philosophi verbis aureis insplendebant, et Sirenes usque in exitium dulces meum incantaverunt intellectum."[1] So a few decades after Peter's death, Rangerius, Bishop of Lucca, writes the life of an episcopal predecessor in elegiacs which show considerable knowledge of grammar and prosody; and yet he protests against liberal studies—philosophy, astronomy, grammar—with pithy commonplace:
"Et nos ergo scholas non spectamus inanes·······Scire Deum satis est, quo nulla scientia maior."[2]
So with the Italians the antique never was an influence brought from without, but always an element of their temperament and faculties. We have not seen that they recast it into novel and interesting forms in the eleventh century; yet they used it familiarly as something of their own, being quite at home with it. As one may imagine some grand old Roman garden, planned and constructed by rich and talented ancestors, and still remaining as a home
- ↑ On Damiani's views of classical studies, see Opusc. xi., Liber qui dicitur Dominus vobiscum, cap. i. (Migne 145, col. 232); Opusc. xlv., De sancta simplicitate (ibid. col. 695); Opusc. lviii., De vera felicitate et sapientia (ibid. col. 831). For the life and works of this interesting man see post, p. 262 sqq., and post, Chapter XVI.
- ↑ Vita Anselmi, 1247 (cited by Ronca, p. 227).
