If Walter of Châtillon had not at some time in his life felt the elation of a view at dawn from a mountain summit, he could hardly have written the brilliant description in the _Alexandreis_ where he tells how Alexander, at the moment when the sun began to gleam upon the surface of the sea, rushed forth from his camp and climbed upon a steep peak whence his vision embraced the bounds of Asia. Looking out over fields green with crops, over many a forested mountain and meadow lavish in its rank grass, over many a city with its encircling walls and many a vineyard and elm tree entwined with vines, the conqueror exclaimed: “Enough! my friends: this land alone satisfies me. To you I leave Europe and your native country.”[992] RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE TOWARDS MOUNTAINS Ganzenmüller in his book on the feeling for nature in the Middle Ages cites several important texts which illustrate the religious attitudes towards mountains that must have prevailed throughout our period. We shall see a little later that Bernard of Clairvaux in one of his letters spoke of mountains as symbolizing the aspirations of the haughty and worldly.[993] But others believed that there is a godly quality about the heights. The biographer of bishop Altmann of Passau, writing in the twelfth century, tells us that one day the bishop, accompanied by an immense crowd of people, climbed a mountain near Mautern in Lower Austria firmly believing that those who serve God here below will climb to the corners and bounds of heaven.[994] Eadmer records of Anselm of Canterbury that on one occasion, when the latter happened to find himself on a high summit, he was so refreshed by the clear air and solitude that he remarked: “Here is my resting place: here will I dwell.”[995] St. Francis of Assisi must have felt the same mystic love of mountains that he felt for birds and animals and that he expressed so beautifully in his hymn to Brother Sun, for did he not in 1224 go into retreat at La Verna, a remote, forest-covered peak in the Casentino,[996] and did he not, as he left, turn back and bless the mountain as he had blessed the birds? At the present time the lower slopes of La Verna are bare and sun-baked. The summit, buttressed by massive ledges, is covered with a beautiful wood, and from it the eye wanders over Tuscany, across the ranges of the Apennines, and to the eastward catches a glimpse of the Adriatic. That St. Francis should deliberately have chosen this place of exceptional charm for a retreat; that he should have made a long, hard journey to reach it; and, above all, that here he received the supreme glory of his life reveal to us something far deeper than mere esthetic satisfaction in the beauty of nature. To St. Francis the quiet summit of the mountain was a symbol of the peace and tranquillity of heaven and of eternity. NORMAL MEDIEVAL FEELING ABOUT MOUNTAINS