y of manifold simony, who serve princes
or flatter them for the sake of obtaining ecclesiastical preferments.[2]
He wrote a treatise to the bishop of Besanzon,[3] against the custom
which the canons of that church had of saying the divine office sitting;
though he allowed all to sit during the lessons. This saint recommended
the use of disciplines whereby to subdue and punish the flesh, which was
adopted as a compensation for long penitential fasts. Three thousand
lashes, with the recital of thirty psalms, were a redemption of a
canonical penance of one year's continuance. Sir Thomas More, St.
Francis of Sales, and others, testify that such means of mortification
are great helps to tame the flesh, and inure it to the labors of
penance; also to remove a hardness of heart and spiritual dryness, and
to soften the soul into compunction. But all danger of abuses, excess,
and singularity, is to be shunned, and other ordinary bodily
mortifications, as watching and fasting, are frequently more advisable.
This saint wrote most severely on the obligations of religious men,[4]
particularly against their strolling abroad; for one of the most
essential qualities of their state is solitude, or at least the spirit
{451} of retirement. He complained loudly of certain evasions, by which
many palliated real infractions of their vow of poverty. He justly
observed: "We can never restore what is decayed of primitive discipline;
and if we, by negligence, suffer any diminution in what remains
established, future ages will never be able to repair such breaches. Let
us not draw upon ourselves so base a reproach; but let us faithfully
transmit to posterity the examples of virtue which we have received from
our forefathers."[5] The holy man was obliged to interrupt his solitude
in obedience to the pope, who sent him in quality of his legate into
France, in 1063, commanding the archbishops and others to receive him as
himself. The holy man reconciled discords, settled the bounds of the
jurisdiction of certain dioceses, and condemned and deposed in councils
those who were convicted of simony. He, notwithstanding, tempered his
severity with mildness and indulgence towards penitents, where charity
and prudence required such a condescension. Henry IV., king of Germany,
at eighteen years of age, began to show the symptoms of a heart
abandoned to impiety, infamous debauchery, treachery, and cruelty. He
married, in 1066, Bertha, daughter to Otho, marquis o