125. The Return letters from some companions to Peter of Poitiers from the woods of Cluny.

The letter of Ernulf, formerly eminent in letters in the city of Rome

To the most beloved former elder of our society, Peter of Poitiers, brother Ernulf, novice hermit and the least of his hermit-companions wishes health of spirit and body.

Your salutation, which (intended to be shown to us) you sent to the father of the new inhabitants of the desert, namely, the lord abbot, made mention of me, almost the most recent of your associates and just as ointment falls from the head untilonto the mouth of the favoured garment. I give thanks to you – ripped from our love – to think such lofty things about us that we earn the title of hermits and because with the zeal of one watching over, you impute to religion anything of anxious welfare we claim. For though coarse hermits, we still think of tomorrow and we do not in the slightest believe ourselves to be religious, if alive we escape from the danger of a brief instant. Indeed I should call you a philosopher-hermit, who lives untroubled next to the dying, undaunted by fear of death, and removed from the frenzied attack of those coming, you dwell with yourself, located alone in your garret on high. And indeed, the desert or your solitude preferably elicits such great envy among us, whatsoever I had tried to write, but the letter of the lord abbot, in which I called you blessed suddenly arriving to him needing to write and intoning so logically in his typical philosophical manner, it overwhelmed me, made mute and speechless, and thus made me more slowly so that I not be deficient to you. And therefore I fell silent. But there was one idea that I was not able to repress, as if a second Helius, which I had conceived in my mind and I –so coarse– expressed it in a rustic style. What is it? That, if you were considering coming to us, with your copy of Augustine’s De academicis, all our leisure would come to an end and we would build a new academy. Who might be the end of these trifles? I must confess truthfully, we yearn more for your coming than we look forward to our return to you. This judgement is held by us all, such that even our ox does not deny it, who seized by the pleasant agreeableness of the desert – whether hungry or satiated – chews the cud [ruminates] without tiring.