The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury | Page 9

his strait is heard on every side the wailing appeal to us, and to
avoid the danger of impending death he shows the slight sign of the
ancient tonsure which we bestowed upon him, begging that we may be
called to his aid and bear witness to the privilege bestowed upon him.
Then straightway touched with pity we run to meet the prodigal son
and snatch the fugitive slave from the gates of death. The book he has
not forgotten is handed to him to be read, and while with lips
stammering with fear he reads a few words, the power of the judge is
loosed, the accuser is withdrawn, and death is put to flight. O
marvellous virtue of an empiric verse! O saving antidote of dreadful
ruin! O precious reading of the psalter, which for this alone deserves to
be called the book of life! Let the laity undergo the judgment of the
secular arm, that either sewn up in sacks they may be carried out to
Neptune, or planted in the earth may fructify for Pluto, or may be
offered amid the flames as a fattened holocaust to Vulcan, or at least
may be hung up as a victim to Juno: while our nursling at a single
reading of the book of life is handed over to the custody of the Bishop,
and rigour is changed to favour, and the forum being transferred from
the laity, death is routed by the clerk who is the nursling of books.
But now let us speak of the clerks who are vessels of virtue. Which of
you about to preach ascends the pulpit or the rostrum without in some
way consulting us? Which of you enters the schools to teach or to
dispute without relying upon our support? First of all, it behoves you to
eat the book with Ezechiel, that the belly of your memory may be
sweetened within, and thus as with the panther refreshed, to whose
breath all beasts and cattle long to approach, the sweet savour of the
spices it has eaten may shed a perfume without. Thus our nature
secretly working in our own, listeners hasten up gladly, as the
load-stone draws the iron nothing loth. What an infinite host of books
lie at Paris or Athens, and at the same time resound in Britain and in
Rome! In truth, while resting they yet move, and while retaining their
own places they are carried about every way to the minds of listeners.

Finally, by the knowledge of literature, we establish Priests, Bishops,
Cardinals, and the Pope, that all things in the ecclesiastical hierarchy
may be fitly disposed. For it is from books that everything of good that
befalls the clerical condition takes its origin. But let this suffice: for it
pains us to recall what we have bestowed upon the degenerate clergy,
because whatever gifts are distributed to the ungrateful seem to be lost
rather than bestowed.
Let us next dwell a little on the recital of the wrongs with which they
requite us, the contempts and cruelties of which we cannot recite an
example in each kind, nay, scarcely the main classes of the several
wrongs. In the first place, we are expelled by force and arms from the
homes of the clergy, which are ours by hereditary right, who were used
to have cells of quietness in the inner chamber, but, alas! in these
unhappy times we are altogether exiled, suffering poverty without the
gates. For our places are seized now by dogs, now by hawks, now by
that biped beast whose cohabitation with the clergy was forbidden of
old, from which we have always taught our nurslings to flee more than
from the asp and the cockatrice; wherefore she, always jealous of the
love of us, and never to be appeased, at length seeing us in some corner
protected only by the web of some dead spider, with a frown abuses
and reviles us with bitter words, declaring us alone of all the furniture
in the house to be unnecessary, and complaining that we are useless for
any household purpose, and advises that we should speedily be
converted into rich caps, sendal and silk and twice-dyed purple, robes
and furs, wool and linen: and, indeed, not without reason, if she could
see our inmost hearts, if she had listened to our secret counsels, if she
had read the book of Theophrastus or Valerius, or only heard the
twenty-fifth chapter of Ecclesiasticus with understanding ears.
And hence it is that we have to mourn for the homes of which we have
been unjustly robbed; and as to our coverings, not that they have not
been given to us, but that the coverings anciently given to us have been
torn by violent hands, insomuch that