"Nil artes, nil pura fides, nil gloria linguae,
Nil fons ingenii, nil probitas sine re."[1]
Hildebert has also a poem "On his Exile," perhaps written while in England with the Red King. Quite in antique style it sings the loss of friends and fields, gardens and granaries, which the writer possessed while prospera fata smiled. Then
"Jurares superos intra mea vota teneri!"
—a very antique sentiment. But the Christian faith of the despoiled and exiled bishop reasserts itself as the poem closes.[2] Did Hildebert also write the still more palpably "antique" elegiacs on Hermaphrodite, and other questionable subjects?[3] That is hard to say. He may or may not have been the author of a somewhat scurrilous squib against a woman who seems to have sent him verses:
"Femina perfida, femina sordida, digna catenis.
"O miserabilis, insatiabilis, insatiata,
Desine scribere, desine mittere, carmina blandia,
Carmina turpia, carmina mollia, vix memoranda,
Nee tibi mittere, nee tibi scribere, disposui me.
"Mens tua vitrea, plumbea, saxea, ferrea, nequam,
Fingere, fallere, prodere, perdere, rem putat aequam."[4]
With all his classical leanings, the major part of Hildebert was Christian. His theological writings which survive, his zeal against certain riotous heretics, and in general his letters, leave no doubt of this. It is from the Christian point of view that he gives his sincerest counsels; it is from that that he balances the advantages of an active or contemplative life, the claims of the Christian vita activa and vita contemplativa. Yet his classic tastes gave temperance to his Christian views, and often drew him to sheer scholarly pleasures and to an antique consideration of the incidents of life.
How sweetly the elements were mixed in him appears in a famous letter written to William of Champeaux, that
