Blanquerna

OF SMELLING

“ To smell roses, lilies and other such flowers gives delight and pleasure to the body, and in this pleasure there is peril, left the soul incline to desire some vanity of the flesh. Wherefore it is good that we who dwell in this convent to the end that we may live lives of aufterity and penance should have no flowers save those that we place on the altar that it may be the better adorned. When we smell the per¬ fumes, of musk and of amber, which women of the world carry in their dress, then is it good for us to remember the sponge and the gall and the vinegar wherewith our Spouse Jesus Chrift quenched His thirft on the day of His Passion. Further, we may remember the ftable wherein He was pleased to be born, and give ourselves thereby an example to take no delight in odours which move man

BLANQUERNA

2. “ When women of the world sit among us, and we smell the various dyes wherewith they have adorned their features, then is it time to remember the wickedness of their minds, and it is good that we reprove them. For if they feel no shame in making manifest in our midft their foolish purpose, in no wise should we have shame in rebuking them, since shame is but meet in matters wherein is error and sin.”

3. “ To inhale evil odours is a thing to be shunned, forasmuch as they corrupt the air, by the which corruption are engendered in the body sickness and death. But even more to be shunned is the friendship of a woman who in her face or dress bears odours that signify the sins for the which she longs. For if through breathing corrupted air the body is exposed to risk of corporal death, no less so, through the friendship and intimacy of an evil woman, is the soul oftentimes inclined to think and desire evil works, whereby the will and remembrance become the occasion to man of eternal punishment.” In this manner and in many others did the abbess ordain that through the sense of smell there should be no occasion in the convent whereby should be loft that bliss which is supreme and eternal.