Guibert Vs St. Augustine Essay

Oft compared to St. Augustine’s Confessions, Guibert writes in a style where he both is telling a history of himself and his land as well as confessing his sins to God. He crossed between growing up with a mother he likened to the Virgin Mary, particularly in that she patiently waited years to consummate her marriage and did not forsake her husband or wifely duties, and his guilt of not being a pious enough boy or man. He related tales of nobles he knew who became dedicated to the church through a monastic order later in life, realizing their material possessions had led to greed and therefore they had sinned against God. Through these, he was also laying bare his own soul, confessing through his writing that he had found himself to be a sinner: greedy, proud, vain. He found married priests and simony particularly distasteful and made attempt to hide his disdain in his writing. Though he laid bare his guilt of sins real and imagined, he also found shame in what he and others had done without recompense to God or the church. …show more content…
Augustine comes through in the language Guibert used (more prostrate, less direct) as well as the very energy of the work. St. Augustine’s writing carried a tone of hope; he understood that his faith would carry him through and that repenting through writing was part of his faith. Guibert, however, seemed less certain hope or faith. A degree of this was a sign of the times as St. Augustine wrote over 700 years prior to Guibert. Christianity was younger, almost more mystical. As Guibert wrote at the beginning of the twelfth century, the height of the Dark Ages, the Christian church had taken on a life of its own. Papal authority affected everything and everyone throughout Western civilization and those without faith were