contemplates what is above reason, and seems to be beside reason, or
even contrary to reason. He teaches that there are three qualities
of contemplation, according to its intensity: mentis dilatatio, an
enlargement of the soul's vision without exceeding the bounds of
human activity; mentis sublevatio, elevation of mind, in which the
intellect, divinely illumined, transcends the measure of humanity,
and beholds the things above itself, but does not entirely lose
self-consciousness; and mentis alienatio, or ecstasy, in which all
memory of the present leaves the mind, and it passes into a state of
divine transfiguration, in which the soul gazes upon truth without
any veils of creatures, not in a mirror darkly, but in its pure
simplicity. This master of the spiritual life died in 1173. Amongst
the glowing souls of the great doctors and theologians in the fourth
heaven, St. Thomas Aquinas bids Dante mark the ardent spirit of
"Richard who in contemplation was more than man."[3]

Benjamin, for Richard, is the type of contemplation, in accordance
with the Vulgate version of Psalm lxvii.: Ibi Benjamin
adolescentulus in mentis excessu: "There is Benjamin, a youth, in
ecstasy of mind"--where the English Bible reads: "Little Benjamin
their ruler."[4] At the birth of Benjamin, his mother Rachel dies:
"For, when the mind of man is rapt above itself, it surpasseth all
the limits of human reasoning. Elevated above itself and rapt in
ecstasy, it beholdeth things in the divine light at which all human
reason succumbs. What, then, is the death of Rachel, save the
failing of reason?"[5]

The treatise here printed under the title Benjamin is based upon a
smaller work of Richard's, a kind of introduction to the Benjamin
Major, entitled: Benjamin Minor; or: De Praeparatione animi ad