I'm reading a biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine. She lived in the 1100s and was Queen of France (which was a very small area at that time) and then Queen of England (much larger). She was very beautiful, kind of like that girl pictured above.
This is what the book says about the Bishop of Canterbury (the church leader in England):
...he now wore a monk's habit, and beneath it, to remind himself of the weakness of the flesh, he wore "a hair shirt of the roughest kind, which reached to his knees and swarmed with vermin; he mortified his flesh with the sparest diet, and his accustomed drink was water used for the cooking of hay." ...exposing his bare back frequently to the discipline of flagellation by his monks. His nights were spent in vigil.
If the leaders of the church were undernourished, in great discomfort (vermin??!!), physically abused, and suffering from a serious sleep shortage, it is no wonder that mistakes were made. I make mistakes and bad decisions just on the lack of sleep alone.
2 comments:
I'd heard of hair shirts but never thought about the vermin factor. I suspect that all of that self-abuse (what you describe goes beyond self-denial) might have been his way of serving self-imposed penance for some besetting sin. Dude probably had secrets.
Either way, that's a lot of SELF, and he probably drew attention to himself vs. God by being such a whack-job.
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