Rabanus Maurus

“ Here were trained most of those scholars whom we shall have to notice in the following reigns, such as Rabanus Maurus, the celebrated abbot of Fulda. A letter addressed by Alcuin to the emperor soon after his establishment at Tours gives a somewhat bombastical account of his labours, but the reader will pardon the pedantry of one who had spent all his life as a schoolmaster. “The employments of your Flaccus in his retreat,” he says, “are suited to his humble sphere, but they are neither inglorious nor unprofitable. ”

“ Believing him in earnest, Maurus, a monk of Mount Sinai, went to Rome with a letter from the Soldan to the pope, signifying his intention to destroy those places, sacred in the estimation of the Christians, in revenge for the injury done to his trade by the Portuguese. The pope sent Maurus into Portugal, where the purport of his message was known before his arrival, and such preparations made for driving the Moors from the trade of India, that Maurus returned to Cairo with more alarming intelligence than he had brought. ”

“ These allegorical elaborations accorded with the habits of this compiler of allegorical comment upon Scripture. [263]
Rabanus was a full Teutonic personality, a massive scholar for his time, untiring in labour and intrinsically honest. Except when involved in the foolishness of the mystic qualities of numbers, or following the will-o’-wisps of allegory, he evinces much sound wisdom. He abhors the pretence of teaching what one has not first diligently learned; and his good sense is shown in his admonition to teachers to use words which their pupils or audience will understand. ”

“ Rabanus is not one of the grand towers of the temple of Science at which posterity will gaze admiringly, nor is he one of the massive buttresses whence numerous shafts and points arise; we should rather compare him to one of the solid stones that are sunk one upon the other into the soft ground to be hardly ever seen again by the eyes of men—one of those who in quiet, busy toil have laid the foundation among the people which now bears so mighty a structure. ”

“ For grammar and rhetoric and all human sciences are vain and even injurious to the servants of God, unless by Divine grace they know how to follow the law of God; for science puffeth up, but charity buildeth up. I would rather see you dead than inflated with vice.”
Nevertheless, the career of Rabanus was far from being one of unruffled repose, and the history of his troubles presents us with a singular episode in monastic annals. The abbot Ratgar was one of those men whose activity of mind and body was a cross to every one about him. ”

“ The De universo is the subject of Compendium der Naturwissenschaften an der Schule zu Fulda im IX. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1880) . Maurus is the subject of monographs by Schwarz (De Rhabano Mauro primo Germaniae praeceptore, 1811) , Kunstmann (Historische Monographie über Hrabanus Magnentius Maurus, 1841) , Spengler (Leben des heil. Rhabanus Maurus, 1856) and Köhler (Rhabanus Maurus u. die Schule zu Fulda, 1870) . Lives by his disciple Rudolphus and by Joannes Trithemius are printed in the Cologne edition of the Opera. See also Pertz, Monum. Germ. Hist. (i. and ii.) ; Bähr, Gesch. d. ”

“ A knowledge of pagan philosophy need not be avoided: "The philosophers, especially the Platonists, if perchance they have spoken truths accordant with our faith, are not to be shunned, but their truths appropriated, as from unjust possessors." [23] And Rabanus continues with the never-failing metaphor of Moses despoiling the Egyptians.
Raban, however, had somewhat larger thoughts of education than his master. For example, he takes a broader view of grammar, which he regards as the scientia of interpreting the poets and historians, and the ratio of correct speech and writing. ”

“ One of his latest bequests was that of his books, which he devised, like a true scholar, partly to his old abbey of Fulda and partly to the monastery of St. Alban at Mainz.
John Trithemius eulogizes him in words which may, perhaps, be transferred into our pages from their original Latin as a specimen of the praise which Rabanus has always received—praise that is indeed worthy of the man who wrote the Veni, Creator.
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“Rabanus was first among the Germans; a scholar universally erudite; profound in science; eloquent and strong in discourse ”

“ In the midst of this world of intellectual life and labor, Rabanus continued for some years to train the first minds of Germany, and reckoned among his pupils the most celebrated men of the age.... For the rest, he was an enemy to anything like narrowness of intellectual training. His own works in prose and verse embraced a large variety of subjects, ... and he is commonly reputed the author of the Veni Creator.”54
One of his pupils, the monk Otfried of Weissembourg, entered with singular ardor into the study of the Tudesque or native dialect. ”

“ Such men will always be worthy of our esteem, and should be gratefully remembered by us. Rabanus was one of the most eminent among these men. He was incontestably the most learned man of his times; and he was the first German who ever wrote on science. ”

“ He took the books from the scholars and he even forbade them to the teacher. This was the cause of some pathetic verses in which Rabanus sets forth his petition for their return. “Let thy clemency,” he exclaims, “concede me books, for the poverty of knowledge suffocates me.” One grates his teeth in reading farther on the words, “Whether you do this or not, yet let the divine power of the Omnipotent always afford you all good things and complete a good fight with an honest course, that you may ever be with Christ in the height of heaven.”
Ratgar was a tyrant ”

“ Rabanus gives a third and mystical reason—that it might be signified that the resurrection, of which the Transfiguration was a type, should take place after the six ages of the world. Origen gives a fourth reason, that it might be signified, that he alone, who transcends all worldly things (for the world was made in six days) is able to ascend above the mount on high and to behold the WORD of God.
Peter, James, and John: “He took up these three,” says S. Chrysostom “because they were greater than the rest.” ”

“ But they are wrong; for a second is a new offence against God, and inflicts on the soul a new wound more deadly than the first; for repentance is more difficult after repeated sin than after the first fall. “Perseverance in sin causes increase of guilt,” says Rabanus. His intercourse with the ungodly, which he ought to have given up after his first fall, drove Peter to this, though, assuredly, he never should have done it, as having experienced its noxiousness and his weakness in their company. ”

“ Leaving the manner of that ancient school life for the present, we are struck with astonishment at the broad and liberal tone of the instruction. Rabanus followed Bede in providing an encyclopaedia of human knowledge for his pupils. He entitled it De Universis and based it on the previous work of Isidore of Seville. Additionally he abridged the grammar of Priscian, a treatise which furnished, even as late as the days of Richard Braythwaite and his Drunken Barnabee, the suggestive line,
“Fregi frontem Prisciani.” ”

“ You may very well imagine that Ceres at the ravishment of her daughter Proserpina was not more attristed, sad, nor mournful than they. Trust me, and your own reason, that the loss of Osiris was not so regrettable to Isis, nor did Venus so deplore the death of Adonis, nor yet did Hercules so bewail the straying of Hylas, nor was the rapt of Polyxena more throbbingly resented and condoled by Priamus and Hecuba, than this aforesaid accident would be sympathetically bemoaned, grievous, ruthful, and anxious to the woefully desolate and disconsolate parents. ”

“ I'm by thee, and have thee fast by the collar; eighteen devils shan't get thee out of my clutches, though I were unarmed. Never did a man yet want weapons who had a good arm with as stout a heart. Heaven would sooner send down a shower of them; even as in Provence, in the fields of La Crau, near Mariannes, there rained stones (they are there to this day) to help Hercules, who otherwise wanted wherewithal to fight Neptune's two bastards. But whither are we bound? Are we a-going to the little children's limbo? By Pluto, they'll bepaw and conskite us all. Or are we going to hell for orders? ”

“ But when Friar John, Xenomanes, and the rest appeared on the ridge, a howl of defiance broke from the thicket. The dark masses seemed beside themselves with rage, and all at once the line was broken.
"By my faith," said Pantagruel, "they are demons, Xenomanes! Look, they have wings, and their wings are as black as their banners!"
This was true. The dark masses had only broken so as to give themselves space to raise their wings in triumph at seeing so many wretched mortals ready for destruction. ”

“ Therefore Rabanus and others think that, symbolically, by the raising of the girl is meant the repentance of one who has only sinned in thought: by the young man, the repentance of those who have sinned in deed as well as in thought: by Lazarus, their repentance, who have contracted a habit and practice of sin. Lastly, Christ here teaches that secret and light sins are blotted out by secret repentance, and therefore the girl was raised in the house. But public sins need a public remedy, therefore, he recalled the young man and Lazarus to life publicly, before multitudes. ”

“ What a devil have we below, quoth Jupiter, that howls so horridly? By the mud of Styx, have not we had all along, and have not we here still enough to do, to set to rights a world of damned puzzling businesses of consequence? We made an end of the fray between Presthan, King of Persia, and Soliman the Turkish emperor, we have stopped up the passages between the Tartars and the Muscovites ”

“ You deal too kindly by them, said Jupiter, for aught I see, Monsieur Priapus. You do not use to be so kind to everybody, let me tell you; for as they seek to eternize their names, it would be much better for them to be thus changed into hard stones than to return to earth and putrefaction. But now to other matters. Yonder behind us, towards the Tuscan sea and the neighbourhood of Mount Apennine, do you see what tragedies are stirred up by certain topping ecclesiastical bullies? This hot fit will last its time, like the Limosins' ovens, and then will be cooled, but not so fast. ”

“ For a short time disaster seemed imminent, and the desperate reaching out to the ends of the earth for divine support could not fail to make a deep impression upon thousands of men. In that moment of dreadful stress, it was not the Etruscan Triad on the Capitol nor Father Mars, but the mystic Ma, the Ancient Mother of Phrygia with her diadem of towers, her lion-chariot and her bloody orgies, that stayed the rush of the Carthaginian. It is true that the city’s ultimate triumph caused a reaction. ”

“ Mind you your charges, gentlemen, or tend your cures as much as you will. I will get me to my drawer; in terms of falconry, my tiring. What drawer or tiring do you mean? said Gargantua. My breviary, said the monk, for just as the falconers, before they feed their hawks, do make them draw at a hen's leg to purge their brains of phlegm and sharpen them to a good appetite, so, by taking this merry little breviary in the morning, I scour all my lungs and am presently ready to drink. ”

“ I know not, for I write where I have no access to books, if our naturalists have sought the theory of this; or whether it may have first occurred to me, which it did while contemplating the character and attributes of Sani, that the raven destroys its young; and if this notion be well founded, and on no other can I account for the rareness of the annual-breeding long-lived raven, we shall at once see the propriety of symbolizing it with Saturn, or Kronos, or Time, devouring or destroying his own offspring.—Moor’s Hindu Pantheon, p. ”

“ The whole history of that period is allegorized in the Râmâyana, which is the mystic narrative in epic form of the struggle between Râma—the first king of the Divine Dynasty of the early Âryans—and Râvana, the symbolical personation of the Atlantean (Lankâ) Race. The former were the incarnations of the Solar Gods; the latter, of the Lunar Devas. This was the great battle between Good and Evil, between White and Black Magic, for the supremacy of the divine forces over the lower terrestrial, or cosmic powers. ”

“ The goddess, whom you shall not find propitious nor favourable unto you, is Minerva, a most redoubtable and dreadful virgin, a powerful and fulminating goddess, an enemy to cuckolds and effeminate youngsters, to cuckold-makers and adulterers. The god is Jupiter, a terrible and thunder-striking god from heaven. And withal it is to be remarked, that, conform to the doctrine of the ancient Etrurians, the manubes, for so did they call the darting hurls or slinging casts of the Vulcanian thunderbolts, did only appertain to her and to Jupiter her father capital. ”

“ His views upon profane knowledge were liberal: one should use the treasured experience and accumulated wisdom of the ancients, for that is still the mainstay of human society; but one should shun their vain as well as pernicious idolatries and superstitions. [28] Let us by all means preserve their sound educational learning and the elements of their philosophy which accord with the verities of Christian doctrine. Raban also realized the sublimity of the study of Astronomy, which he deemed "a worthy argument for the religious and a torment for the curious. ”