Letter XIV. To the Same Pope Honor Lus

(Circa A.D. 1126.)

lie commends the cause of the Church of Dijon to the-Pontiff.

To the Supreme Pontiff HONORIUS, Brother BERNARD, called to be Abbot of Clairvaux, wishes health, and all that the prayers of a sinner can do in his behalf.

God, whom we venerate in you, knows the respectful fear with which I write to you. But charity, who governs both you and me, makes me bold so to do. Being requested by the Church of Dijon,¹ I have undertaken to make request .on its behalf. But I almost doubt what I ought precisely to .ask for it. For, as it is unjust to try to obtain anything •contrary to justice, either by entreaty or by purchase, so it is superfluous before one who loves justice to make great •efforts on behalf of that which is just. But although I do not know precisely what request it is best to make, yet I have full confidence that your kindness will not be unfruitful, especially in the cause of Religious.² And, indeed, I know not what your Holiness may think good to decide after a careful examination of the matter, but I can bear witness that I have heard, and frequently do hear, that the Abbey of Dijon has possessed by long and uncontested tenure that³ which the people of Luxeuil are contesting with them, so that the older inhabitants of the neighbourhood are astonished, and indignant at the unfounded claim.

Footnotes

1. This wss the convent of monks of St. Benignus, at Dijon, which, as he says in the following Letter, he held in greataffection, because of the antiquity of their house. It was in the Church of that house that the f ither and mother of Bernard svere buried. It was not until long after that they were taken up to be carried to Clairvaux. The writers of that age, including Bjrnard, as we see in this nnd many others of his Letters, use the words Chinc/i and Monastery VOL. I. 12 indiscriminately to denote a convent of monks. See Letters 39, 60, 339, 392, 394, 39;, etc., while it is not rare to find the word Monastery employed for Church* The Church of S. Benignus is simply called the Church of Dijon, because it is the principal Church of the town. ↩

2. Bernard and other writers not unfrequemly use this name to designate monks, as in Letters 45 and 202, and in Sermon 26, de Diversis, n. 2. Gregory the Great long before uses the same term (Book i. Ep. 59). ↩

3. The dispute was respecting two little chapels of Clermont and of Vignory, and was not closed until a decision of Stephen, Archbishop of Vienna, assisted by some other Bishops. (Perard in Burgundicis Monumentis, pp. 224 and 228.) ↩