2.8 How he conducted himself before God during his priory

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...he subjected himself to God by a true contrition of heart and body.

He did not leave any part of divine contemplation untouched, but subduing his body with fasts, vigils, and hair shirts, through silence, the psalmody and those exercises which were mentioned [above], he sufficed to be changed completely from the old to the new man, and thus, to make a passage almost fully from the oldness of the world to the newness of Christ.[1]

He did not abandon, under any pretext of [pastoral] cares, any of the offices, any of the chants, [nor] any [part] of the full Cluniac psalmody. He maintained the observances of the cloister in his palace and, while exposed to the world, he held himself removed from the vanities of the world —as if in an inviolable enclosure— on account of a commitment to religion made almost inborn through long and constant practice.[2]

But lest someone marvel that the demon was not put to flight by the sprinkling of holy water, then let him understand that a remedy applied to the exterior is unable to do anything for a sickness lying hidden in the interior. By ‘sickness’ I mean mortal sin, which as long as it remains camouflaged in someone’s interior, the exterior reception of any sacrament cannot do anything for them.

This is shown clearly in the principal sacraments of the Church, baptism and the Eucharist. If, in fact, they were able to be salvific, despite the persistence of interior malice, not even Judas would have hanged himself with a noose after having received the sacrament of the body of Christ with the other disciples.[3]

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[he imitated Job, offering sacrifices for his brothers]

Who could describe in detail this holy soul, mindless of all terrestrial desire, almost escaping the flesh, delighted in the heavens of diverse matters? His sighs? His groans? Not simply his tears but the river of his tears? — in appearance descending just to earth, but in reality rising just until the highest summit of the deity.

In account of its frequent and serious menace, this poverty in him constrained the heart and overburdened his body unceasingly with many burdens.

[1]DM II, viii, 35- 39.

[2]DM II, xiv, 10-16; Peter is citing Vita Sancti Martini 10, 2.

[3]DM I, vi, 49-57.