The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury | Page 8

own parent and base offspring
of the ungrateful cuckoo, who when he has grown strong slays his
nurse, the giver of his strength, are degenerate clerks with regard to
books. Bring it again to mind and consider faithfully what ye receive
through books, and ye will find that books are as it were the creators of
your distinction, without which other favourers would have been
wanting.
In sooth, while still untrained and helpless ye crept up to us, ye spake
as children, ye thought as children, ye cried as children and begged to
be made partakers of our milk. But we being straightway moved by
your tears gave you the breast of grammar to suck, which ye plied
continually with teeth and tongue, until ye lost your native
barbarousness and learned to speak with our tongues the mighty things
of God. And next we clad you with the goodly garments of philosophy,
rhetoric and dialectic, of which we had and have a store, while ye were
naked as a tablet to be painted on. For all the household of philosophy
are clothed with garments, that the nakedness and rawness of the
intellect may be covered. After this, providing you with the fourfold
wings of the quadrivials that ye might be winged like the seraphs and
so mount above the cherubim, we sent you to a friend at whose door, if
only ye importunately knocked, ye might borrow the three loaves of the
Knowledge of the Trinity, in which consists the final felicity of every
sojourner below. Nay, if ye deny that ye had these privileges, we boldly
declare that ye either lost them by your carelessness, or that through

your sloth ye spurned them when offered to you. If these things seem
but a light matter to you, we will add yet greater things. Ye are a
chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy race, ye are a peculiar people
chosen into the lot of God, ye are priests and ministers of God, nay, ye
are called the very Church of God, as though the laity were not to be
called churchmen. Ye, being preferred to the laity, sing psalms and
hymns in the chancel, and, serving the altar and living by the altar,
make the true body of Christ, wherein God Himself has honoured you
not only above the laity, but even a little higher than the angels. For to
whom of His angels has He said at any time: Thou art a priest for ever
after the order of Melchisedech? Ye dispense the patrimony of the
crucified one to the poor, wherein it is required of stewards that a man
be found faithful. Ye are shepherds of the Lord's flock, as well in
example of life as in the word of doctrine, which is bound to repay you
with milk and wool.
Who are the givers of all these things, O clerks? Is it not books? Do ye
remember therefore, we pray, how many and how great liberties and
privileges are bestowed upon the clergy through us? In truth, taught by
us who are the vessels of wisdom and intellect, ye ascend the teacher's
chair and are called of men Rabbi. By us ye become marvellous in the
eyes of the laity, like great lights in the world, and possess the dignities
of the Church according to your various stations. By us, while ye still
lack the first down upon your cheeks, ye are established in your early
years and bear the tonsure on your heads, while the dread sentence of
the Church is heard: Touch not mine anointed and do my prophets no
harm, and he who has rashly touched them let him forthwith by his own
blow be smitten violently with the wound of an anathema. At length
yielding your lives to wickedness, reaching the two paths of Pythagoras,
ye choose the left branch, and going backward ye let go the lot of God
which ye had first assumed, becoming companions of thieves. And thus
ever going from bad to worse, dyed with theft and murder and manifold
impurities, your fame and conscience stained by sins, at the bidding of
justice ye are confined in manacles and fetters, and are kept to be
punished by a most shameful death. Then your friend is put far away,
nor is there any to mourn your lot. Peter swears that he knows not the
man: the people cry to the judge: Crucify, crucify Him! If thou let this

man go, thou act not Caesar's friend. Now all refuge has perished, for
ye must stand before the judgment-seat, and there is no appeal, but only
hanging is in store for you. While the wretched man's heart is thus
filled with woe and only the sorrowing Muses bedew their cheeks with
tears, in