OF THE BURNING OF HIS BOOK--OF THE PERSECUTION HE HAD AT THE HANDS
OF HIS ABBOT AND THE BRETHREN
Straightway upon my summons I went to the council, and there,
without further examination or debate, did they compel me with my
own hand to cast that memorable book of mine into the flames.
Although my enemies appeared to have nothing to say while the book
was burning, one of them muttered something about having seen it
written therein that God the Father was alone omnipotent. This
reached the ears of the legate, who replied in astonishment that he
could not believe that even a child would make so absurd a blunder.
"Our common faith," he said, "holds and sets forth that the Three
are alike omnipotent." A certain Tirric, a schoolmaster, hearing
this, sarcastically added the Athanasian phrase, "And yet there are
not three omnipotent Persons, but only One."
This man's bishop forthwith began to censure him, bidding him
desist from such treasonable talk, but he boldly stood his ground,
and said, as if quoting the words of Daniel: "'Are ye such fools,
ye sons of Israel, that without examination or knowledge of the
truth ye have condemned a daughter of Israel? Return again to the
place of judgment,' (Daniel, xiii, 48--The History of Susanna) and
there give judgment on the judge himself. You have set up this
judge, forsooth, for the instruction of faith and the correction of
error, and yet, when he ought to give judgment, he condemns himself
out of his own mouth. Set free today, with the help of God's mercy,
one who is manifestly innocent, even as Susanna was freed of old
from her false accusers."
Thereupon the archbishop arose and confirmed the legate's
statement, but changed the wording thereof, as indeed was most
fitting. "It is God's truth," he said, "that the Father is
omnipotent, the Son is omnipotent, the Holy Spirit is omnipotent.
And whosoever dissents from this is openly in error, and must not
be listened to. Nevertheless, if it be your pleasure, it would be
well that this our brother should publicly state before us all the
faith that is in him, to the end that, according to its deserts, it
may either be approved or else condemned and corrected."
When, however, I fain would have arisen to profess and set forth my
faith, in order that I might express in my own words that which was
in my heart, my enemies declared that it was not needful for me to
do more than recite the Athanasian Symbol, a thing which any boy
might do as well as I. And lest I should allege ignorance,
pretending that I did not know the words by heart, they had a copy
of it set before me to read. And read it I did as best I could for
my groans and sighs and tears. Thereupon, as if I had been a
convicted criminal, I was handed over to the Abbot of St. Médard,
who was there present, and led to his monastery as to a prison. And
with this the council was immediately dissolved.
The abbot and the monks of the aforesaid monastery, thinking that I
would remain long with them, received me with great exultation, and
diligently sought to console me, but all in vain. O God, who dost
judge justice itself, in what venom of the spirit, in what
bitterness of mind, did I blame even Thee for my shame, accusing
Thee in my madness! Full often did I repeat the lament of St.
Anthony: "Kindly Jesus, where wert Thou?" The sorrow that tortured
me, the shame that overwhelmed me, the desperation that wracked my
mind, all these I could then feel, but even now I can find no words
to express them. Comparing these new sufferings of my soul with
those I had formerly endured in my body, it seemed that I was in
very truth the most miserable among men. Indeed that earlier
betrayal had become a little thing in comparison with this later
evil, and I lamented the hurt to my fair name far more than the one
to my body. The latter, indeed, I had brought upon myself through
my own wrongdoing, but this other violence had come upon me solely
by reason of the honesty of my purpose and my love of our faith,
which had compelled me to write that which I believed.
The very cruelty and heartlessness of my punishment, however, made
every one who heard the story vehement in censuring it, so that
those who had a hand therein were soon eager to disclaim all
responsibility, shouldering the blame on others. Nay, matters came
to such a pass that even my rivals denied that they had had
anything to do with the matter, and as for the legate, he publicly
denounced the malice with which the French had acted. Swayed by
repentance for his injustice, and feeling that he had yielded
enough to satisfy their rancour, he shortly freed me from the
monastery whither I had been taken, and sent me back to my own.
Here, however, I found almost as many enemies as I had in the
former days of which I have already spoken, for the vileness and
shamelessness of their way of living made them realize that they
would again have to endure my censure.
After a few months had passed, chance gave them an opportunity by
which they sought to destroy me. It happened that one day, in the
course of my reading, I came upon a certain passage of Bede, in his
commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, wherein he asserts that
Dionysius the Areopagite was the bishop, not of Athens, but of
Corinth. Now, this was directly counter to the belief of the monks,
who were wont to boast that their Dionysius, or Denis, was not only
the Areopagite but was likewise proved by his acts to have been the
Bishop of Athens. Having thus found this testimony of Bede's in
contradiction of our own tradition, I showed it somewhat jestingly
to sundry of the monks who chanced to be near. Wrathfully they
declared that Bede was no better than a liar, and that they had a
far more trustworthy authority in the person of Hilduin, a former
abbot of theirs, who had travelled for a long time throughout
Greece for the purpose of investigating this very question. He,
they insisted, had by his writings removed all possible doubt on
the subject, and had securely established the truth of the
traditional belief.
One of the monks went so far as to ask me brazenly which of the
two, Bede or Hilduin, I considered the better authority on this
point. I replied that the authority of Bede, whose writings are
held in high esteem by the whole Latin Church, appeared to me the
better. Thereupon in a great rage they began to cry out that at
last I had openly proved the hatred I had always felt for our
monastery, and that I was seeking to disgrace it in the eyes of the
whole kingdom, robbing it of the honour in which it had
particularly gloried, by thus denying that the Areopagite was their
patron saint. To this I answered that I had never denied the fact,
and that I did not much care whether their patron was the
Areopagite or some one else, provided only he had received his
crown from God. Thereupon they ran to the abbot and told him of the
misdemeanour with which they charged me.
The abbot listened to their story with delight, rejoicing at having
found a chance to crush me, for the greater vileness of his life
made him fear me more even than the rest did. Accordingly he
summoned his council, and when the brethren had assembled he
violently threatened me, declaring that he would straightway send
me to the king, by him to be punished for having thus sullied his
crown and the glory of his royalty. And until he should hand me
over to the king, he ordered that I should be closely guarded. In
vain did I offer to submit to the customary discipline if I had in
any way been guilty. Then, horrified at their wickedness, which
seemed to crown the ill fortune I had so long endured, and in utter
despair at the apparent conspiracy of the whole world against me, I
fled secretly from the monastery by night, helped thereto by some
of the monks who took pity on me, and likewise aided by some of my
scholars.
I made my way to a region where I had formerly dwelt, hard by the
lands of Count Theobald (of Champagne). He himself had some slight
acquaintance with me, and had compassion on me by reason of my
persecutions, of which the story had reached him. I found a home
there within the walls of Provins, in a priory of the monks of
Troyes, the prior of which had in former days known me well and
shown me much love. In his joy at my coming he cared for me with
all diligence. It chanced, however, that one day my abbot came to
Provins to see the count on certain matters of business. As soon as
I had learned of this, I went to the count, the prior accompanying
me, and besought him to intercede in my behalf with the abbot. I
asked no more than that the abbot should absolve me of the charge
against me, and give me permission to live the monastic life
wheresoever I could find a suitable place. The abbot, however, and
those who were with him took the matter under advisement, saying
that they would give the count an answer the day before they
departed. It appeared from their words that they thought I wished
to go to some other abbey, a thing which they regarded as an
immense disgrace to their own. They had, indeed, taken particular
pride in the fact that, upon my conversion, I had come to them, as
if scorning all other abbeys, and accordingly they considered that
it would bring great shame upon them if I should now desert their
abbey and seek another. For this reason they refused to listen
either to my own plea or to that of the count. Furthermore, they
threatened me with excommunication unless I should instantly
return; likewise they forbade the prior with whom I had taken
refuge to keep me longer, under pain of sharing my excommunication.
When we heard this both the prior and I were stricken with fear.
The abbot went away still obdurate, but a few days thereafter he
died.
As soon as his successor had been named, I went to him, accompanied
by the Bishop of Meaux, to try if I might win from him the
permission I had vainly sought of his predecessor. At first he
would not give his assent, but finally, through the intervention of
certain friends of mine, I secured the right to appeal to the king
and his council, and in this way I at last obtained what I sought.
The royal seneschal, Stephen, having summoned the abbot and his
subordinates that they might state their case, asked them why they
wanted to keep me against my will. He pointed out that this might
easily bring them into evil repute, and certainly could do them no
good, seeing that their way of living was utterly incompatible with
mine. I knew it to be the opinion of the royal council that the
irregularities in the conduct of this abbey would tend to bring it
more and more under the control of the king, making it increasingly
useful and likewise profitable to him, and for this reason I had
good hope of easily winning the support of the king and those about
him.
Thus, indeed, did it come to pass. But in order that the monastery
might not be shorn of any of the glory which it had enjoyed by
reason of my sojourn there, they granted me permission to betake
myself to any solitary place I might choose, provided only I did
not put myself under the rule of any other abbey. This was agreed
upon and confirmed on both sides in the presence of the king and
his councellors. Forthwith I sought out a lonely spot known to me
of old in the region of Troyes, and there, on a bit of land which
had been given to me, and with the approval of the bishop of the
district, I built with reeds and stalks my first oratory in the
name of the Holy Trinity. And there concealed, with but one
comrade, a certain cleric, I was able to sing over and over again
to the Lord: "Lo, then would I wander far off, and remain in the
wilderness" (Ps. IV, 7).