THESE pages but now passed away relate to a personage once celebrated and conspicuous, into an obscurity worse than mere oblivion, because it is less easy to remedy. The confusion in which his history is involved chiefly arises from the circumstance of the same city having produced at nearly the same epoch two persons of the same name, and of character and pursuits not entirely dissimilar. If Dromio of Ephesus and Dromio of Syracuse gave rise to various misunderstandings, how much more so may two Alani, living at the same time, and both of them de Insulis ? Several reasons may render it not undesirable to speak in some little detail of the principal personage so called. One is, that he was a considerable and important writer upon those religious sects in France to which some consequence has of late been attached under the appellations of Albigeois and Vaudois. And another reason is, that his history and later writings involve certain hidden peculiarities that are worthy of development, and curious enough to detect in one who was regarded, both personally and by virtue of the high office he had filled, as the very jus et norma of orthodoxy to the whole realm of France. Lastly, the great rarity of his works in this country may render it agreeable to some readers to see an account of them. The amplest, and much the least incorrect, edition of his extant works was published at Antwerp in 1654, by Charles de Visch, Cistercian Prior of Dunes, under a long title, of which this is the substance-" Alani Magni de Insulis, Sacræ Theologice Doctoris, Cognomine Universalis, &c., &c., Opera Moralia, Parænetica, et Polemica quæ reperiri potuerunt, &c." They fill one volume of the small folio size, which appears to be exceedingly scarce in these parts. The writer believes that the libraries of Bodley at Oxford, of Cambridge University, and of the British Museum, do not contain any copy of it. If the royal library of Paris VOL. XVI.-July, 1839. B * contains the volume, it is the more surprising that Monsr. Roquefort, in the Biographie Universelle, should describe it (as he seems to do) without ever having looked at it. Among the various tracts forged by the alchemists, there appeared at Leyden, in 1600, one entitled "Alani de Insulis Dicta de Lapide Philosophico." Monsr. Roquefort, speaking of the Antwerp edition, says, " On trouve dans cette editione le Dicta de Lapide Philosophico.' If he has found in it either that alchemical tract itself, or any allusion to it, he has been more fortunate than another has been in the examination of an apparently perfect copy. It seems probable that he never had the book in his hands. Subsequently, that is to say, in the second edition of his Bibliotheca Cisterciensium, the same De Visch published for the first time certain other portions of the works of Alanus. And in the same work+ he announced the existence in MS. at Louvain of his poem, " De Mundo Triplici;" but unfortuately left it where he found it. The first question that meets us is the date of the Alanus surnamed Magnus. It must be premised that there was a certain Alanus de Insulis, a native, as no man has disputed, of the city of Lisle, in Flanders, properly called Ryssel; who enjoyed the friendship and patronage of St. Bernard of Clara Vallis, and to whom an interesting letter from Pierre de Celles is preserved in the Bibliotheca Patrum.§ He left behind him two little works-viz., an Explanation of the Prophecies of Merlin, and a Life of St. Bernard. We also possess the will or testament by which he poses of his worldly goods, and which is important, from his having affixed the date of the year, A.D. 1182. In his Merlin, he says, "I remember, when I was still a little boy (puerulus) in Flanders, at Insula, where I was born, that a woman was detected in witchcraft,” &c., and subjoins, "this was at the time when Count Theodoric was invited into Flanders by the men of Lisle, Ghent, and Bruges," &c. This event, saith de Visch, was certainly from 1128 to 1130. Therefore they who say that he was sent to Clairvaux to receive instruction about the year 1128,|| must have a little antedated that circumstance of his life. Thither, however, he was sent, and studied under Bernard. He was promoted to the rank of abbot of the new abbey of Ripatorium, or La Rivour, near Troyes; and from thence was elevated in 1151 to the bishopric of Auxerre in Burgundy. In 1167, after performing active and efficient services to the secular church in the administration of that diocese, he resigned his functions, and retired to the monastery of Clara Vallis, where he spent the greater part of his remaining life, and died. The Abbé Leboeuf, in his History of Auxerre, deposes to having seen his monument at Clairvaux¶ in 1730, with the inscription "Hic jacet dñus Alanus I. Abbas Ripatorii deinceps Autissiod. Ep. obiit anno.... The date was at that time defaced. But formerly Second Art. of Alain de Lisle. + Bibl. Ser. Cist. p. 13. ed. 1656. Polycarp. Leyser Poet. Medii Ævi. p. 1092. Styled in some old MSS. Petrus Alanus. $ Tom. xii. part 2, p. 251, cit. de Visch, Bibl. Cist. p. 16, ed. 1649. Biogr. Universelle, First Art. of Alain de Lisle. Hist. Auxerre, i. p. 300. (saith he) people could read "1182." No such thing ever was or could be read. It was the date of his will, and they could read that; but it was not the date of his death. For Messieurs de Ste. Marthe* found him acting as a mediator in some monastic quarrels in 1183, and affixing his signature to a public document in 1185. With what year the mutilated inscription should be supplied remains uncertain. But probably we have traced him nearly down to his hour of rest. At a later period, as all are fully agreed, died the more famous and voluminous author whose extant remains bear the title of Alanus Magnus. Citeaux was the place of his burial; and the epitaph on his monument-which began with three lines running to this effect in English, "Brief space of time laid in brief space of ground He knew the arts all seven, and scriptures twain, concluded with declaring that he died in 1294, "Mille ducenteno, nonageno quoque quarto." It was situated on the left-hand side of the cloisters as you entered the abbey church. Of the birth date of Alanus Magnus nothing can be said; unless it be, that the words "brevis hora," in the first line, are not so likely to have been applied to a man of extreme age, overripe, and dropping from the branch, as to one whose time of life had given longer hopes. The intermediate dates of his life are en ply wanting. This solitary but important date seems to have passed current, till the laborious Casimir Oudin, (a Premonstratensian monk, who had embraced Calvinism,) in his work, "De Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis,"+ published a refutation of it, which appears clear and decisive. Matthieu Bonhomme, in his edition of Alan's Parabola, in 1501, had given only the three first lines of the epitaph, observing that they were with difficulty deciphered; and this was considerably anterior to any quotation of the entire epitaph. It is therefore to be supposed that the four last hexameters were subsequently inscribed on his tomb by the Cistercians. He proves by the following authorities that Alanus really died in A.D. 1202 or 1203, not less than ninety-one or two years earlier. The Chronicon Belgicum ending in 1475 states that Magister Alanus, author of the Anticlaudian, the Ars Prædicandi, and of a work against the Albigenses, Waldenses, &c., died at Citeaux in 1202. Otho de Sancto Blasio, the continuator of Otho of Frisingen, (who flourished early in the 13th century,) places the same Alanus between Peter Cantor, who died in 1190, and Præpositivus Cremonensis, who died in 1210, which quadrates with the date 1202. Alberic of Troisfontaines, writing in 1241, identifies Alanus Magnus by the same three works, and says that he died at Citeaux in 1203. And how (asks Oudin, with very natural triumph) could he allude at all, in 1241, to the death of a man who lived till 1294? He further inquires, Gallia Christiana in Eccl. Autissiodorensi. + Tom. ii. p. 1388, etc. why, if so, Henry of Ghent should have classed him among the writers of the 12th century? And he might, with a moment's more thought, have asked a more searching question-viz., how could Henry of Ghent, who departed this life in 1293, speak of him as already departed, "ingenii sui monumenta relinquens,' "who did not die till 1294? It is curious that the Cistercians should have thus hugely erred in date concerning one of their own luminaries; but no such consideration can shake his historical arguments. And some remarks may be further adduced in the way of confirmation to them. Philip Walter de Chastellon, otherwise styled Gualtherus de Insulis, provost of the Canons of Tournay, wrote his once famous Alexandreis in the period between the years 1176 and 1201, during which period William, first archbishop of Rheims,† to whom it was dedicated, sate. Henry of Ghent says of that poem, "It is at the present day of such high dignity in the schools of the grammarians, that the study of the ancient poets is neglected for it." They might have learnt better from the author himself, who, in his Prologus, distinctly informs us that he is not at all superior to Virgil, "non me arbitror Mantuano vate meliorem." Such great celebrity in a poet, whom he might fairly consider as no way more entitled to admiration than himself, seems to have moved the spleen and jealousy of his fellow townsman, Alanus de Insulis, who hath these lines: "Illic pannoso plebescit carmine noster Ennius, et Priami fortunas intonat; illic Hæret et ignavam queritur torpescere musam. "‡ In the two first verses we may detect an allusion to Josephus Iscanus, whose Bellum Trojanum was addressed to Baldwin while he was archbishop of Canterbury, and consequently published between the years 1184 and 1191. And when it is considered that the Alexandreis opens with this line "Gesta ducis Macedum totum vulgata per orbem,”] it will scarcely be disputed by any one that Gualtherus de Insulis is the object of satire. It is less certain, but seems most probable, from the tone of the passage, that contemporaries and rivals are here maligned. There is another curious passage of the Anticlaudian,§ in which he thus falls foul of some contemporary grammarian, accusing him both of apostasy and bad grammar:-" Our apostate handles all the topics of grammar, suffering in his discourses the dull torpor of See Henr. Gandav. de Scr. Eccle. c. 21, p. 121, ed. Fabricii. Not William II., as Fabricius in Bibl. Med. et Inf. Latin. erroneously asserts. The latter prelate sate from 1219 to 1226, by which all Oudin's authorities would be upset. Anticlaud. i. 165-70. So in edit. 1613; and not "digesta per orbem," as stated in Biogr. Univ., art. Gualtier. Anticlaud. 2. v. 488. |