Odo of Cluny
Odo of Cluny (French: Odon; c. 878 – 18 November 942) was the second abbot of Cluny. Among his writings are three books of Collationes (moral essays) and several hymns.
Quotes
[edit]- (Nam) corporea pulchritudo in pelle solummodo constat. Nam si viderent homines hoc quod subtus pellem est, sicut lynces in Boetia cernere interiora feruntur, mulieres videre nausearent. Iste decor in flegmate, et sanguine, et humore, ac felle, consistit. Si quis enim considerat quae intra nares, et quae intra fauces, et quae intra ventrem lateant, sordes utique reperiet. Et si nec extremis digitis flegma vel stercus tangere patimur, quomodo ipsum stercoris saccum amplecti desideramus?
- For bodily beauty is but skin-deep; if men could see below the skin, as the lynxes of Boeotia are said to see into the inward parts, then the sight of a woman would be nauseous unto them. All that beauty consisteth but in phlegm and blood and humours and gall. If a man consider that which is hidden within the nose, the throat, and the belly, he will find filth everywhere; and, if we cannot bring ourselves, even with the tips of our fingers, to touch such phlegm or dung, wherefore do we desire to embrace this bag of filth itself?
- Collationes (Collationum Libri Tres), bk. 2, sec. 9 (ed. J. P. Migne, 1853; tr. G. G. Coulton, 1923)
See also
[edit]- Giraldus Cambrensis, Gemma ecclesiastica, dist. 2, ch. 4
- J. S. Brewer (ed.) Giraldi Cambrensis opera, vol. 2 (1862), p. 181 (Rolls Series)
External links
[edit]
- J. P. Migne (ed.) Patrologiæ cursus completus, vol. 133 (Paris, 1853), col. 556
- G. G. Coulton, Five Centuries of Religion, vol. 1 (1923), appx. 23
- Aldous Huxley, Antic Hay (1923), ch. 20
- William Mortensen, Monsters and Madonnas (1936), "Youth", n.p.
- Bruce Marshall, The Yellow Streak (1977), pt. 2, sec. 10; pt. 3, sec. 4