the head of this cathedral school, where he did not cease to teach until his death. As bishop, widely esteemed and influential, he rebuilt the cathedral, aided by the kings of France and Denmark, the dukes of Aquitaine and Normandy, the counts of Champagne and Blois. His vast crypt still endures, a shadowy goal for thousands of pilgrim knees, and an ample support for the great edifice above it. Admiring tradition has ascribed to him even this glory of a later time.
From near and far, pious students came to benefit by the instruction of the school, of which Fulbert was the head and inspiration. Close was their intercourse with their "Venerable Socrates" in the small school buildings near the cathedral. From the accounts, we can almost see him moving among them, stopping to correct one here, or looking over the shoulder of another engaged upon a geometric figure, and putting some new problem. Among the pupils there might be rivalry, quarrels, breaches of decorum; but there was the master, ever grave and steadfast, always ready to encourage with his sympathy, but prepared also to reprove, either silently by withdrawing his confidence, or in words, as when he forbade an instructor to joke when explaining Donatus: "spectaculum factus es omnibus; cave."
Some of these scholars became men of sanctity and renown—Berengar of Tours gained an unhappy fame. A fellow-student wrote to him in later years addressing him as foster-brother:
"I have called thee foster-brother because of that sweetest common life led by us while youths in the Academy of Chartres under our venerable Socrates. Well we proved his saving doctrine and holy living, and now that he is with God we should hope to be aided by his prayers. Surely he is mindful of us, cherishing us even more than when he moved a pilgrim in the body of this death, and drew us to him by vows and tacit prayer, entreating us in those evening colloquies (vespertina colloquia) in the garden by the chapel, that we should tread the royal way, and cleave to the footprints of the holy fathers."[1]
The cathedral school included youths receiving their first lessons, as well as older scholars and instructors. They
- ↑ Migne 143, col. 1290.
