remained unbroken amidst the waves of the sea.



CHAPTER XIV



A description of Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury {193}


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