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 description 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.
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