Page:William of Malmesbury's Chronicle.djvu/491

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a.d. 1119.]
Serlo, abbat of Gloucester.
471
Poor and confin'd, and exiled from his see, The virtuous prelate bore each injury: Now rich, free, fix'd, his suff'rings are made even, For Christ he follows, and inherits heaven. His life, religion: and a judgment sound, His mind adorn'd; his works his fame resound, Reading his knowledge, and a golden mean His words, arrang'd: in his decisions seen Was law: severity his justice arm'd, And graceful beauty in his person charm'd: His breast was piety's perpetual stand, The pastor's crosier well-became his hand: The pope promotes him, but the earl deprives: Through Christ to joy eternal he survives.

The contemporaries and associates in religion of this Peter, were Robert de Arbrisil,[1] and Bernard[2] abbat of Tyron, the first of whom was the most celebrated and eloquent preacher of these times: so much did he excel, not in frothy, but honeyed diction, that from the gifts of persons vying with each other in making presents, he founded that noble monastery of nuns at Font-Evraud, in which every secular pleasure being extirpated, no other place possesses such multitudes of devout women, fervent in their obedience to God. For in addition to the rejection of other allurements, how great is this! that they never speak but in the chapter: the rule of constant silence being enjoined by the superior, because, when this is broken, women are prone to vain talk. The other, a noted admirer of poverty, leaving a most opulent monastery, retired with a few followers into a woody and sequestered place, and there, "As the light could not be hidden under a bushel," vast numbers flocking to him, he founded a monastery, more celebrated for the piety and number of the monks, than for the splendour and extent of its riches.

And, that England may not be supposed destitute of virtue, who can pass by Serlo, abbat of Gloucester, who advanced that place, almost from meanness and insignificance, to a glorious pitch? All England is acquainted with the considerate rule professed at Gloucester, which the weak

  1. ↑ Robert de Arbrisil founded the monastery of Fontevrault in 1099, and died in 1117.
  2. ↑ "Bernard founded the abbey of Tyron in 1109, and died in 1116."—Hardy.
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