[De contemptu mundi]

seen face to face, and had beheld His essence and happiness. And not only the angels, but they had also familiarly heard the Creator of all, God, speaking. These things, without doubt revolving in this sorrowful valley, rendered them so anxious that all things became bitter to them, and they spent their days in sighs and groans even unto death. And not without cause, because among all mortals, they were both the most beautiful and the most prudent, for they were the first formed by God in His own likeness. It was not inconsistent with their discernment if, because of the expulsion from their happiness, they led a life more bitter than all their successors. For we see it with our own eyes: if someone powerful in our age, who had been surrounded by many goods and fenced about by the joys of this world, were to be transferred from such a pinnacle of all happiness into such great poverty, would he not be wounded by a greater dart of anxiety than some common person who had never experienced such pleasures? And so that I may interweave the life and age of man in our time (and there is no doubt that men lived for longer centuries before the flood) into this little work of ours with a brief summary, so that from our misery our own eyes might appear to shine, in the first place