Ch. 14 - Abelard

Super cuncta, subter cuncta,
Extra cuncta, intra cuncta,
Intra cuncta nec inclusus,
Extra cuncta nec exclusus,
Super cuncta nec elatus,
Subter cuncta nec substratus,
Super totus, praesidendo,
Subter totus, sustinendo,
Extra totus, complectendo,
Intra totus est, implendo.

According to Hildebert, Bishop of Le Mans and Archbishop of Tours,
these verses describe God. Hildebert was the first poet of his time;
no small merit, since he was contemporary with the "Chanson de
Roland" and the first crusade; he was also a strong man, since he
was able, as Bishop of Le Mans, to gain great credit by maintaining
himself against William the Norman and Fulk of Anjou; and finally he
was a prelate of high authority. He lived between 1055 and 1133.
Supposing his verses to have been written in middle life, toward the
year 1100, they may be taken to represent the accepted doctrine of
the Church at the time of the first crusade. They were little more
than a versified form of the Latin of Saint Gregory the Great who
wrote five-hundred years before: "Ipse manet intra omnia, ipse extra
omnia, ipse supra omnia, ipse infra omnia; et superior est per
potentiam et inferior per sustentationem; exterior per magnitudinem
et interior per subtilitatem; sursum regens, deorsum continens,
extra circumdans, interius penetrans; nec alia parte superior, alia
inferior, aut alia ex parte exterior atque ex alia manet interior,
sed unus idemque totus ubique." According to Saint Gregory, in the
sixth century, God was "one and the same and wholly everywhere";
"immanent within everything, without everything, above everything,
below everything, sursum regens, dear sum continens"; while
according to Archbishop Hildebert in the eleventh century: "God is
overall things, under all things; outside all, inside all; within
but not enclosed; without but not excluded; above but not raised up;
below but not depressed; wholly above, presiding; wholly beneath,
sustaining; wholly without, embracing; wholly within, filling."
Finally, according to Benedict Spinoza, another five hundred years
later still: "God is a being, absolutely infinite; that is to say, a
substance made up of an infinity of attributes, each one of which
expresses an eternal and infinite essence."

Spinoza was the great pantheist, whose name is still a terror to the
orthodox, and whose philosophy is--very properly--a horror to the
Church--and yet Spinoza never wrote a line that, to the unguided
student, sounds more Spinozist than the words of Saint Gregory and
Archbishop Hildebert. If God is everywhere; wholly; presiding,
sustaining, embracing and filling, "sursum regens, deorsum