第44章 BOOK II(13)

CHAPTER XIII

Of the journey by Wenloch,Brumfeld,the castle of Ludlow,and Leominster,to Hereford From Shrewsbury,we continued our journey towards Wenloch,by a narrow and rugged way,called Evil-street,where,in our time,a Jew,travelling with the archdeacon of the place,whose name was Sin (Peccatum),and the dean,whose name was Devil,towards Shrewsbury,hearing the archdeacon say,that his archdeaconry began at a place called Evil-street,and extended as far as Mal-pas,towards Chester,pleasantly told them,"It would be a miracle,if his fate brought him safe out of a country,whose archdeacon was Sin,whose dean the devil;the entrance to the archdeaconry Evil-street,and its exit Bad-pass."{191}

From Wenloch,we passed by the little cell of Brumfeld,{192}the noble castle of Ludlow,through Leominster to Hereford leaving on our right hand the districts of Melenyth and Elvel;thus (describing as it were a circle)we came to the same point from which we had commenced this laborious journey through Wales.

During this long and laudable legation,about three thousand men were signed with the cross;well skilled in the use of arrows and lances,and versed in military matters;impatient to attack the enemies of the faith;profitably and happily engaged for the service of Christ,if the expedition of the Holy Cross had been forwarded with an alacrity equal to the diligence and devotion with which the forces were collected.But by the secret,though never unjust,judgment of God,the journey of the Roman emperor was delayed,and dissensions arose amongst our kings.The premature and fatal hand of death arrested the king of Sicily,who had been the foremost sovereign in supplying the holy land with corn and provisions during the period of their distress.In consequence of his death,violent contentions arose amongst our princes respecting their several rights to the kingdom;and the faithful beyond sea suffered severely by want and famine,surrounded on all sides by enemies,and most anxiously waiting for supplies.But as affliction may strengthen the understanding,as gold is tried by fire,and virtue may be confirmed in weakness,these things are suffered to happen;since adversity (as Gregory testifies)opposed to good prayers is the probation of virtue,not the judgment of reproof.For who does not know how fortunate a circumstance it was that Paul went to Italy,and suffered so dreadful a shipwreck?But the ship of his heart remained unbroken amidst the waves of the sea.

CHAPTER XIV

A deion of Baldwin,archbishop of Canterbury {193}

Let it not be thought superfluous to describe the exterior and inward qualities of that person,the particulars of whose embassy,and as it were holy peregrination,we have briefly and succinctly related.He was a man of a dark complexion,of an open and venerable countenance,of a moderate stature,a good person,and rather inclined to be thin than corpulent.He was a modest and grave man,of so great abstinence and continence,that ill report scarcely ever presumed to say any thing against him;a man of few words;slow to anger,temperate and moderate in all his passions and affections;swift to hear,slow to speak;he was from an early age well instructed in literature,and bearing the yoke of the Lord from his youth,by the purity of his morals became a distinguished luminary to the people;wherefore voluntarily resigning the honour of the archlevite,{194}which he had canonically obtained,and despising the pomps and vanities of the world,he assumed with holy devotion the habit of the Cistercian order;and as he had been formerly more than a monk in his manners,within the space of a year he was appointed abbot,and in a few years afterwards preferred first to a bishopric,and then to an archbishopric;and having been found faithful in a little,had authority given him over much.But,as Cicero says,"Nature had made nothing entirely perfect;"when he came into power,not laying aside that sweet innate benignity which he had always shewn when a private man,sustaining his people with his staff rather than chastising them with rods,feeding them as it were with the milk of a mother,and not making use of the scourges of the father,he incurred public scandal for his remissness.So great was his lenity that he put an end to all pastoral rigour;and was a better monk than abbot,a better bishop than archbishop.

Hence pope Urban addressed him;"Urban,servant of the servants of God,to the most fervent monk,to the warm abbot,to the luke-warm bishop,to the remiss archbishop,health,etc."This second successor to the martyr Thomas,having heard of the insults offered to our Saviour and his holy cross,was amongst the first who signed themselves with the cross,and manfully assumed the office of preaching its service both at home and in the most remote parts of the kingdom.Pursuing his journey to the Holy Land,he embarked on board a vessel at Marseilles,and landed safely in a port at Tyre,from whence he proceeded to Acre,where he found our army both attacking and attacked,our forces dispirited by the defection of the princes,and thrown into a state of desolation and despair;fatigued by long expectation of supplies,greatly afflicted by hunger and want,and distempered by the inclemency of the air:

finding his end approaching,he embraced his fellow subjects,relieving their wants by liberal acts of charity and pious exhortations,and by the tenor of his life and actions strengthened them in the faith;whose ways,life,and deeds,may he who is alone the "way,the truth,and the life,"the way without offence,the truth without doubt,and the life without end,direct in truth,together with the whole body of the faithful,and for the glory of his name and the palm of faith which he hath planted,teach their hands to war,and their fingers to fight.