messenger of the queen of arts 100 tinuation of remaining studies, but also every hope within your hearts of cultivating the various sciences. And that in what manner? In such a way, that having trampled the principles of earthly rhetoric, you will be compelled by reason of [your] vocation to learn heavenly [rhetoric]; that having despised the lessons of pagan philosophy concerning the nature of things, the movement of the heavenly bodies, and the position of the Earth, you will grasp the doctrine of Christian philosophy concerning the last things; finally, that, having ignored the speculative theology most often rehearsed in various theological schools, you will concern yourselves with mystical and practical theology. Therefore, if in the world you have the opinion of the most eloquent Tullius (Cicero), of the grandiloquent Maro (Virgil), the astute Aristotle, the subtle Plato; then you who are removed from the world and living in the cloister ought give yourself rather to silence than to speech, more to uprooting vices than to writing verses, more to sincere simplicity than to sophisticated flair, more to humility than to refinement. But does this cause you to be deprived of knowledge? Not in the least. You lose a lesser knowledge; you gain a more noble knowledge. You relinquish human knowledge; you drink in divine knowledge. This, I say, is the knowledge which St. Augustine, the sun and refuge of holy knowledge, begged for with all his heart (Soliloquia II 1): “Lord, if I had known myself, I would have known You”; it is the knowledge which Francis of Assisi, the glory of religious and of patriarchs, already possessed when by these words he addressed himself to Jesus: “Who are You, good Jesus — he spoke — and who am I? Are you not the One who is, and I, the one who is not?” To gain this knowledge, so many philosophers rejected hastily their porticos, so many theologians have left their debate halls, so many princes of the Church have left behind their mitres, so many kings have trampled upon their scepters, so many emperors have set aside their crowns, and even a certain prince of the entire Christian world, the high priest, the
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