And lo! there soon occurred
to our contemplation a host of unhappy, nay, rather of elect
scholars, in whom God the Creator and Nature His handmaid planted
the roots of excellent morals and of famous sciences, but whom
the poverty of their circumstances so oppressed that before the
frown of adverse fortune the seeds of excellence, so fruitful in
the cultivated field of youth, not being watered by the rain that
they require, are forced to wither away. Thus it happens that
"bright virtue lurks buried in obscurity," to use the words of
Boethius, and burning lights are not put under a bushel, but for
want of oil are utterly extinguished. Thus the field, so full of
flower in Spring, has withered up before harvest time; thus wheat
degenerates to tares, and vines into the wild vines, and thus
olives run into the wild olive; the tender stems rot away
altogether, and those who might have grown up into strong pillars
of the Church, being endowed with the capacity of a subtle
intellect, abandon the schools of learning. With poverty only as
their stepmother, they are repelled violently from the nectared
cup of philosophy as soon as they have tasted of it and have
become more fiercely thirsty by the very taste. Though fit for
the liberal arts and disposed to study the sacred writings alone,
being deprived of the aid of their friends, by a kind of apostasy
they return to the mechanical arts solely to gain a livelihood,
to the loss of the Church and the degradation of the whole
clergy.
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