The clergy, the monks, the unarmed people, everywhere wept and groaned. None were glad save thieves and robbers, and they were not long to be glad.[1] And so he follows out the same strain through a crowd of prophetic images, the locust, the mildew, and every other instrument of divine wrath. We admit the aptness of his parallel when he tells us that in those days there was no king nor duke in the Norman Jerusalem; we are less able to follow the analogy when he adds that the rebellious folk sacrificed at Dan and Bethel to the golden calves of Jeroboam.[2] At last, when his stock of metaphors is worn out, he goes back to his story to tell the same tale of crime and sorrow in other parts of the Norman duchy.[3]
§ 2. Personal Coming of William Rufus.
1091.
In a general view of the state of affairs, William Rufus had lost much more by the check of his plans at RouenCeterum allegoricas allegationes et idoneas humanis moribus interpretationes studiosis rimandas relinquam, simplicemque Normannicarum historiam rerum adhuc aliquantulum protelare satagam." This praiseworthy resolve reminds us of an earlier passage (683 B) where he laments the failure of the princes and prelates of his day to work miracles, and his own inability to force them to the needful pitch of holiness; "Ast ego vim illis ut sanctificentur inferre nequeo. Unde his omissis super rebus quæ fiunt veracem dictatum facio."
It would seem from this that Orderic dictated his book. (See also his complaint in 718 C, when at the age of sixty he felt too old to write and had no one to write for him.) We need not therefore infer in some other cases that, because an author dictated, therefore he could not write.]
- ↑ Ord. Vit. 691 A, B. "Soli gaudent, sed non diu nec feliciter, qui furari seu prædari possunt pertinaciter."
- ↑ Ib. "In diebus illis non erat rex neque dux Hierusalem, aureisque vitulis Jeroboam rebellis plebs immolabat in Dan et Bethel." We are used to this kind of analogy whenever any one goes after a wrong Pope; but Normandy, with all its crimes, seems to have been perfectly orthodox.
- ↑ Ib. C. "Multa intueor in divina pagina quæ subtiliter coaptata nostri temporis eventui videntur similia. [Every age, except perhaps the eighteenth, has made the same remark.
