Letter XLIII. To the Same Henry

(Circa A.D. 1128.)

He writes on behalf of the Abbey of Molesme.

The kind reception which you gave to my last request gives me room to hope to obtain what I now ask. I would first express my most earnest thanks for your previous kindness, and then venture to beg that you would make me a second time your debtor, namely, by permitting the Abbey of Molesme to possess freely the Church,¹ on account of which they are grieved to have lost the favour of your Serenity, and which it is certain that they possessed in the time of your predecessors. Farewell.

A house of the Benedictines, in the Diocese of Langres, founded by Abbot Robert, who was also Abbot of Citeaux; it was that reason which caused Bernard to care always for the interests of that Abbey. See Letters 44, 60, and 80. Peter de Celles speaks of it thus in his fourteenth Letter to the monks of Molesme, B. vu.: " Molesme is a hen full of plumes and furnished with wings. How many and great offspring has it produced? From it has emerged the original germ of Citeaux.'' The reference in this Letter, as in the following, is to the Church of Senan, which was formerly a Priory in the Diocese of Sens and Deanery of Courtenay. ↩

Chapter 43 of 491

Letter XLIII. To the Same Henry

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