The Apologia of Gerdibert of Mayence

Extract

The Ordo Vagorum was already cutting its teeth when Gerdibert was born. But the infant was precocious and caught up with the vagabonds in the second lap; by his majority he was well apace with them. Not officially one of their number, their spirit was his, their doctrine his creed. He was not one of them because circumstances against which his character—more ready to smile winsomely on adversity than to attack it—could not compete, thrust him early into a very different environment. Thanks to the pious impatience of a romantic and rather erratic mother he was clapped into a cloister, sicut denarium furatum in bursam as he said, and hidden with a like despatch from the curious gaze of the world. Gerdibert was certainly in those early years too soft and submitting to be entirely lovable. Yet lovable he was even then, with his mane of fair hair that was always unruly, his brilliant eyes, his chiselled nose, his full yet delicate lips which tempted many a maid and matron, his ready amenity. Perhaps at first he found the cloistral solitude soothing, for it freed him from the matrons with marriageable daughters, a pest by no means confined to our later ages, who pursued him, as he said, sicut leonissae quaerentes quern devorent. His friend Philibert had capped the quotation: ‘quibus resiste fortis in coelibatu,’ adding the Tu autern Domine miserere mihi, for he himself was wed some fourteen years and had spent thirteen and three-quarters regretting it.