death, between him and St Bernard, was owing. Nor ought it to be forgotten, that to Peter the Venerable western Christendom was indebted for its first accurate acquaintance with the Koran. Travelling in Spain, he was convinced how important it was that the Church should be thoroughly acquainted with that system with which it was in hostile contact, and at a great cost he caused a translation of the Koran into Latin to be made. That he should have done this, is alone sufficient to mark him as no common man. He has also himself written a refutation of Mahometanism. He died in 1156. The poems which bear his name are not considerable in bulk, nor can they be esteemed of any very high order of merit. Yet apart from their interest as productions of one who played so important a part in the history of his age, these lines which immediately follow, and another hymn occupying a later place in this volume, possess a sufficient worth of their own to justify their insertion. IX. DE NATIVITATE DOMINI. YELUM gaude, terra plaude, CELUM Nemo mutus sit in laude: Auctor rerum creaturam Miseratus perituram, IX. Bibliotheca Cluniacensis, Paris, 1614, p. 1349. 10 Præbet dextram libertatis Fecundatur Spiritu. Et ut virga parit florem, Carnis tectum habitu. Matris alitur intactæ Res stupenda sæculis! Escâ vivit alienâ Per quem cuncta manent plena ; Pastu carnis enutritur A ALANUS. LANUS de Insulis, or of Lille, in Flanders, called Doctor Universalis from the extent of his acquirements, was born in the first half of the twelfth century, and died at the beginning of the next. His life is as perplexed a skein for the biographer to disentangle as can well be imagined, abundantly justifying the axiom of Bacon: Citius emergit veritas ex errore quam ex confusione-the main perplexity arising here from the difficulty of determining whether he and Alanus, also de Insulis, the friend of St Bernard and bishop of Auxerre, be one and the same person. The Biographie Universelle corrected this as an error, although a generally received one; Oudinus, it is true, having already shewn the way (De Script. Eccles. vol. ii. p. 1389-1404); but Guericke and Neander again identify the two. The question, however, does not belong to this volume. The Doctor Universalis is undoubtedly the poet, and it is only with the poet we are here concerned. The only collected edition of his works was published by Charles de Visch, Antwerp, 1654; a volume so rare that only in the Imperial Library at Paris was I able to get sight of it, and to obtain a perfect copy of a very beautiful Ode, inserted later in this volume. His Parables were a favourite book before the revival of learning; but the work of his which enjoyed the highest reputation was a long moral poem, entitled Anti Claudianus, it does not very clearly appear why. (See Leyser, p. 1017, who gives copious extracts from it.) I know not whether it will bear out the praises which have been bestowed upon it and on its author. One says of him (Leyser, p. 1020): Inter ævi sui poëtas facile familiam duxit; and Oudinus (vol. ii. p. 1405), characterizes the poem as singulari festivitate, lepore, et elegantiâ conscriptum; see also Rambach, Anthol. Christl. Gesänge, vol. i. p. 329. Certainly, in the following lines, the description of a natural Paradise, Ovidian both in their merits and defects, we must recognize the poet's hand. Est locus ex nostro secretus climate, tractu * Elsewhere he has this couplet: Ver, quasi fullo novus, reparando pallia pratis Commentantur aves, dum gutturis organa pulsant. In medio lacrymatur humus, fletuque beato Fulgurat in proprio, peregrinâ fæce solutus. The following lines form part, or, as Oudinus asserts, the whole, of the genuine epitaph of Alanus. The last of them is striking enough: Alanum brevis hora brevi tumulo sepelivit, X. DE NATIVITATE DOMINI. IC est qui, carnis intrans ergastula nostræ, Se pœnæ vinxit, vinctos ut solveret; æger Passus, ut exilio miseros subduceret exul. Sic morbus damnat morbum, mors morte fugatur: X. Alani Opera, ed. C. de Visch, Antwerp, 1654, p. 377. 5 10 |