20 - Warin Of Cambridge

Summary

Abbot Warin. The twentieth.

He was succeeded by Abbot Warin who came from Cambridge, from middling stock. When in the world, before he took the habit, this abbot had won a great reputation and widespread fame because of his reverence for the righteous life, his outstanding knowledge of vliterature and the elegant beauty of his form. Together with his brother, Master Matthew, who was distinguished by the same gifts though not to the same degree, he had been educated in natural sciences at Salerno by efficient teachers with a sense of style, and then he took up the habit of a religious in the cloister of St Alban. Within a short time, because of his outstandingly virtuous life, his deep knowledge of books and his personal elegance he was chosen and made prior.

So when, as I have described, Abbot Simon of pious memory had been taken up from our midst and the abbacy was vacant, the matter of a replacement was discussed. Thus Dom Warin, the prior, was chosen as abbot. The whole community unanimously assented apart from Dom William Martel, the sacristan, who himself had ambitions for the same position more than was fitting. For he claimed that Warin was just about cross-eyed and could barely see in front of him, and that he came from a family of common burgesses who were thirsty for nothing apart from amassing their pennies by all possible means. He even openly referred to the family by the scandalous name of ‘salt dealers’. He also declared that, if Warin was elected abbot, together with his brother Matthew, he would cause misery by riding roughshod over all the brothers and scattering them abroad, for no one would dare even to mutter against them. Nor was his view altogether disproved by events, as the following pages will show.

But since a single objection could not impede the fixed purpose of those who had turned to this one man, Warin was chosen and made abbot, and on the day of the nativity of the Blessed Virgin received the gift of the benediction. Not long after, confirmed in his full power, his aforenamed brother, Matthew, was elevated to the priorate. These two, namely the abbot and prior, also had a nephew, Master Warin, renowned in the study of the decretals.