ABSTRACT
Jacques de Vitry tells the tale of a master of the schools of Paris who, on a certain occasion, was astonished to see before him the appearance o f one of his students who had died the previous day. The student was wearing a sort of cope made of parchment and covered with tiny writing, and when the master enquired as to the reason for the curious garment, the student replied that the writings were the sophysmata et curiositates on which he had spent his days, and that words failed him when it came to expressing his sufferings. ‘But I can show you’, said the student, ‘by having you feel a single drop of my sweat’ . Thereupon the master stretched out his hand, and the drop that fell upon it was so hot that his hand felt as if it had been pierced by the sharpest of arrows. He immediately forsook the schools o f logic and entered the Order of Citeaux, quoting the verse:
Linquo coax ranis, era corvis, vanaque vanis, Ad logicam pergo que mortis non timet ergo.1
