The Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through
Wales
by Geraldus Cambrensis
Book II
Chapter XIV
A description of Baldwin, archbishop of
Canterbury193
Let it not be thought superfluous to describe the
exterior and inward qualities of that person, the
particulars of whose embassy, and as it were holy
peregrination, we have briefly and succinctly related. He
was a man of a dark complexion, of an open and venerable
countenance, of a moderate stature, a good person, and
rather inclined to be thin than corpulent. He was a modest
and grave man, of so great abstinence and continence, that
ill report scarcely ever presumed to say any thing against
him; a man of few words; slow to anger, temperate and
moderate in all his passions and affections; swift to hear,
slow to speak; he was from an early age well instructed in
literature, and bearing the yoke of the Lord from his youth,
by the purity of his morals became a distinguished luminary
to the people; wherefore voluntarily resigning the honour of
the archlevite,194
which he had canonically obtained, and despising the pomps
and vanities of the world, he assumed with holy devotion the
habit of the Cistercian order; and as he had been formerly
more than a monk in his manners, within the space of a year
he was appointed abbot, and in a few years afterwards
preferred first to a bishopric, and then to an
archbishopric; and having been found faithful in a little,
had authority given him over much. But, as Cicero says,
"Nature had made nothing entirely perfect;" when he came
into power, not laying aside that sweet innate benignity
which he had always shewn when a private man, sustaining his
people with his staff rather than chastising them with rods,
feeding them as it were with the milk of a mother, and not
making use of the scourges of the father, he incurred public
scandal for his remissness. So great was his lenity that he
put an end to all pastoral rigour; and was a better monk
than abbot, a better bishop than archbishop. Hence pope
Urban addressed him; "Urban, servant of the servants of God,
to the most fervent monk, to the warm abbot, to the
luke-warm bishop, to the remiss archbishop, health,
etc."
This second successor to the martyr Thomas, having heard
of the insults offered to our Saviour and his holy cross,
was amongst the first who signed themselves with the cross,
and manfully assumed the office of preaching its service
both at home and in the most remote parts of the kingdom.
Pursuing his journey to the Holy Land, he embarked on board
a vessel at Marseilles, and landed safely in a port at Tyre,
from whence he proceeded to Acre, where he found our army
both attacking and attacked, our forces dispirited by the
defection of the princes, and thrown into a state of
desolation and despair; fatigued by long expectation of
supplies, greatly afflicted by hunger and want, and
distempered by the inclemency of the air: finding his end
approaching, he embraced his fellow subjects, relieving
their wants by liberal acts of charity and pious
exhortations, and by the tenor of his life and actions
strengthened them in the faith; whose ways, life, and deeds,
may he who is alone the "way, the truth, and the life," the
way without offence, the truth without doubt, and the life
without end, direct in truth, together with the whole body
of the faithful, and for the glory of his name and the palm
of faith which he hath planted, teach their hands to war,
and their fingers to fight.
The Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through
Wales
by Geraldus Cambrensis
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