36. To Pope Pascal

To his honoured lord and beloved father, Pascal, supreme pope, Anselm, servant of the Church of Canterbury, offers due submission and earnest supplication.

After I had, being recalled to the bishopric, returned to England, I published the apostolic decrees which I had heard when present at the Roman council; about which my lord the king asked your holiness by his legate, and I in my letter asked your advice according to the view you should take of the matter. You answered the king by letter, but me you answered not at all; but since you did not give him a satisfactory answer, certain bishops are going to seek an audience of you about the same matter; and I am sending my messengers to report to me the tone of your reply, lest I seem to anyone to do anything by my own judgment or by my own will. With all due reverence for the apostolic see, I do most earnestly entreat that you will order concerning the petition which the aforesaid bishops will present as your wisdom shall judge to be best and most useful before God; and whatever that should be, let me know exactly through my messengers. For as it belongs not to me to loose what you bind, so it is not mine to bind what you loose.