bat 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."[1]
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.[2] 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."[3]
- ↑ Chronicon, cap. 35 (Migne 139, col. 46). The sense is easy to follow, but the impossible constructions render an exact translation quite impossible. It is doubtful whether this Benedictus was an Italian. The Italian writing of this period, like that of Liutprand, is easier than among more painful students north of the Alps. But otherwise its qualities are rarely more pronounced. Ease is shown, however, in the Chronicon Venetum of John the Deacon (d. cir. 1008). See ante, Chapter XIII., iii.
- ↑ Migne 133. This work fills four hundred columns in Migne. On Odo see ante, Chapter XII., ii.
- ↑ Odo of Cluny, Collationes, lib. i. cap. i. (Migne 133, col. 519 and 520).
"Therefore God, Creator and Judge of mankind, although He have justly driven our race from that felicity of Paradise, yet mindful of His goodness, lest man all guilt should incur what he deserves, softens the sorrows of this pilgrimage with many benefits.… Indeed the purpose of that same Scripture is to press us from the
