ABSTRACT
An answer requires guesswork. The action of the Monodies ends in 1115, and by that time events at Laon and Soissons had already overwhelmed the personal tone of the book's early chapters. We do, however, possess a source potentially more indicative of Guibert's final years. Around 1120, perhaps a little later,2 Guibert undertook what would eventually prove to be his longest and most ambitious work, the Tropologies on the Prophets. It is probably his most seldom studied and least understood book-in part because of the difficulty of its subject, in part because Guibert never finished it, and in part because d' Achery and therefore Migne only published the first half of
Let us first review Guibert's ideas on the contemplative life and its connection to the active. It is a topic with which he dealt only sporadically in his Genesis commentary, perhaps because it was a theme too well studied for someone who preferred innovation.3 We have seen that he applied the vocabulary of active and contemplative, actualis and contemplativa, to the two basic directions taken by the Will, using as illustrations Abraham's wives, Sarah and Hagar. The two "Wills," according to Guibert's description, were incompatible. It was necessary for Reason, Abraham, to choose between them.4 Guibert, like Gregory the Great, applied the same active-contemplative framework to Jacob's wives, Rachel and Leah. "Rachel can signify love for God," he writes, "and Leah, love for one's neighbor. Laban-that is, love of divine splendor-Laban fathered both of these oppositions as if they were two daughters. Leah is said to be older because (love of neighbor) must first be exercised before one can attain the beauty of the second (love for God)." (Moralia, 220D-221A) The two daughters originated from the same mind but remained perpetual rivals. Jacob, their husband, who like Abraham frequently embodies Reason, must alternate between the two wives throughout his life, just as a Christian must often abandon the heights of contemplation for the cares of the world.
