82. To Count Hugo

Anselm the archbishop to his lord and beloved friend, Count Hugo, greeting, and God's blessing, and his own.

The bearer of this, a Cluniac monk, complains that you have taken and are keeping prisoner a certain monk of Cluny, and that another, lately made a monk and now dead, has been carried off by your men and buried where it pleased them. If these things are so, I am very much grieved on your account, because they have not been done at all as becomes you. Wherefore I desire, pray, and advise you, as a friend, to restore without delay the monk whom you have prisoner; and since you captured him, offer to make reparation for that. Your own honour alone requires you to do this. But afterwards, if you have any claim upon this monk, make complaint thereof, and you shall be compensated according as justice requires. As to the dead man also I advise you to offer to make amends as shall be most fair and just. But I tell you also plainly, as a man whose honour and worth are dear to me, that if you do not what I say, you will be much blamed; and I also, did I fail in doing what ecclesiastical discipline enjoins to be done in such a case, should be reproached by many. I greet your wife, my beloved daughter.