Against the Carthusians

Summary

To the brethren who have made profession at the Grande Chartreuse, Berengar [wishes them] to have eternal rest with Lazarus, who was formerly poor.

1. I will speak to my lords, ‘though I am but dust and ashes’. But ‘I am become as a beast’ before you, and yet ‘both men and beasts thou wilt preserve, O Lord’. God has multiplied His mercy, for He gathered you together ‘from the four winds’ of heaven, that you might lie down with Abraham in the kingdom of his Father. He who was faithful in all the house of Egypt brought you out of your Egypt with a powerful hand and a mighty arm, so that, vomiting up ‘the flesh pots’, you could cry in the desert: ‘Manhu? What is this?’ 2. This word is the word of the desert. This word, which the throat of Egypt cannot bear to bring forth, expresses amazement at the rain of heavenly food. Therefore, so as not to reek of Pharaoh's garlic, you have come over to the hyssop of the Cross, and, instead of the groans you uttered in Egypt, you cry, now that you are fed by desire for heaven, ‘What is this?’ From the region of the desert comes manna for travellers in the desert, and you justly say ‘What is this?’ What, I say, is this that wards off hunger, that satisfies desire, and while satisfying makes it blaze up? 3. The hand of unexhausted mercy snatched mud out of mud, and in Solomon’s diadem, wherewith his mother crowned him, He made you gold instead of mud. But, who knows how, the gold has now turned back into mud, and the currency of the golden age is degenerating into cheap iron. For you brought your bodies up into the mountains, but your minds stayed behind in the valleys. 4. From whence then shall help come to us?