Letter LIX. To Guilencus, Bishop of Langres

(A.D. 1129.)

He counsels him, in order to take away any occasion for scandal and calumny, to abandon to the Church of S. Stephen at Dijon, certain articles -which Gamier had left there on dying.¹

To his lord and father GUILENCUS, by the Grace of God, Bishop of Langres, Brother BERNARD, Abbot of Clairvaux, health and his entire devotion.

On hearing of the death of the Archdeacon Dom Gamier² I have thought it necessary to address a prayer to your Paternity and even to press upon you my advice, if you will deign to attend to the suggestions of one so humble. As relates to the goods which the late Abbot possessed in the Church of S. Stephen at Dijon, have the generosity to renounce the rights that you have over these things. I know well that they ought to return to you as I remember was arranged and settled in writing in the Chapter of Langres, when your son Harbert was constituted the first regular abbot of that house. But because I know that for you on any account to assert your rights over these properties which that Church has so long held would be an occasion of grave scandal to the Canons and of great reproach to the Abbot, whom they would accuse of having by coming among them established a bad precedent, since it was because of him and at his coming that their Church sustained so great a loss, I beg you, therefore, and at the same time advise and entreat you, to spare so great a scandal to so many feeble servants of Christ, and at the same time to free this vicar of Christ from such a reproach by conceding to this Church what has been theirs so long.³

Footnotes

1. Wilencus or, as others write, Guillermus. He had been Archdeacon of Langres. Perard, Burgund. Minium., p. 87. ↩

2. He had been Abbot of S. Stephen at Dijon, before regular canons were intro duced there, which was done in 1113, in which year the four canons retired to Quincy to lead there the life of regulars. In 1 116, then numbering twelve, they returned to their former house. That house was governed up to 1125 by the Priors Arnulf and afterwards Galo; and that year Dom Erbert or Harbert was instituted as abbot in the presence of Hubaud, Archbishop of Lyons; Stephen, Bishop of Autun; Goceran, or Josceran, Bishop of Langres, and other persons (Perard). ↩

3. That was. in fact, done by Guilencus in 1129, as we learn from a charter published by Perard (p. 97) and subscribed by many other persons, among' others by the Abbots of Citeaux and Clairvaux, assembled at Langres. In the same year a controversy, which was between the same Church and the monks of S. Seine, was settled by the same Josceran at the advice and with the counsel of Gautier, Bishop of Chalons-sur-Saone, and the abbots of Citeaux, Busay, and Clairvaux (//•., p. 102). The matter was afterwards submitted to Pope Innocent, who remitted the decision to Stephen, Abbot of Cistell, and Bernard of Clairvaux (p. 103). See how Bernard alone exercised influence over all things, and alone was in the habit of closing all lawsuits and controversies (Mabillon's note). VOL. I. l6 ↩