Letter XXIX. To Stephen, Bishop of Metz

(Circa A.D. 1126.)

He congratulates Stephen on the restored peace of the Church, -which he says is due only to the bounty of God.¹

To STEPHEN, by the Grace of God, the strenuous minister of the Church of Metz, his humble brethren in Christ from Clairvaux, wish health and assure him of their prayers.

From the day when, if you remember, you deigned to associate yourself with our community, and to commend yourself humbly to our prayers, I have always been anxious, as I ought, to know something of your state, and have frequently inquired as I was able respecting your welfare, from those who could inform me, earnestly de siring and praying that your work and all your undertakings might be prospered in God, and your steps directed in the path of His commandments. I bless God who has not rejected my prayer nor turned His mercy from you, who has made me glad by the coming of this venerable brother William, in whom I have not less confidence than in myself, and who has informed us of your good health and prosperity, and of the restoration of peace to your Church by your means. I congratulate you upon it, but I render glory to God, knowing that all you are able to do is of Him, and not of yourself. Which also I venture as a friend to warn you always to keep before your mind, that you may not fall into a kind of powerlessness either to be or to do anything, if you should think otherwise, and attribute to your own merits 'or powers (which God forbid) the least of your successes. Otherwise it is to be feared that your peace will be turned into trouble, your prosperity into adversity, by a just judgment of Him who is accustomed to resist the proud, but give grace unto the humble; who not only is holy with the holy, but perverse with the perverse man, as we read in the Psalm (Ps. xviii. 26), who not only makes peace, but creates evil, as is described by the Prophet (Is. xlv. 7).

Footnotes

1. He succeeded to the See in A.D. 1120, on the deposition of Adalbero, the fourth Bishop of Metz of that name, as I find in the abridged annals of S. Vincent, at Metz, adjusted to the Paschal Cycle, in which Stephen is related to have died on 2gth Dec., A.D. 1 163. Bernard makes grave complaints of him in Letters 177 and 178. ↩