Letter LXVIII. To the Same, Upon the Same Subject

To the Reverend the Abbot of Flay, to the brethren of that convent, and to certain others, Brother BERNARD wishes health.

MY GOOD BRETHREN,— 1. It would have been a proof of moderation on your part had you shown yourselves satisfied with my former explanation in answer to your complaint, and refrained from harassing those who do not deserve it. But as to your former attacks you have added greater ones, and have thrown among us new germs of discord (which, we trust, will no more be fruitful than the former were), and as by not replying I may seem to acknowledge fault where there is none, I reply truthfully a second time to what you angrily object. This is the whole of my fault, which you consider so great; this the vast injustice that I have done to you; that a monk, alone, a wanderer, poor, miserable, flying from peril to his soul, seeking earnestly his own salvation, at his earnest application and request we have received; or that having thus received him, we do not eject him without cause, and so make ourselves prevaricators, destroyers of what we have built. For this we are considered trans gressors of the Rule, of the canons, of the law of nature itself! You demand with indignation, why we have pre sumed to admit among us a monk of yours, excommunicated by you, which we would not suffer ourselves. But as to the excommunication, why need we reply, when you give a sufficient reply yourselves for us, since you know without doubt that he was received by us, before he was excom municated by you? But if he was regularly received, it is a monk under our jurisdiction and not under yours, that you have excommunicated: and you will see, whether that was rightly done.

2. It remains therefore to be ascertained, whether he was rightly received; and this is the sole question between us. You indeed, since you cannot deny that a monk may regularly be received from a monastery that is unknown, contend that yours was known to us. We deny it, and you do not believe us. But if you do not believe us in a simple denial, do so when we affirm by oath. I take God to witness that I did not know you, and do not know you; I have received the writings of unknown persons and I have replied to unknown persons. I feel indeed your violence and your attacks, but yet I am not acquainted with the assailants themselves. But you for the purpose of convincing me of pretended ignorance, employ the crushing argument that those cannot be unknown to me whose name, that of the abbot and of the monastery itself I have placed in my letters; as if when you know the names of things you know the things themselves also. Since in that case I have the pleasure to know the names of Michael and Gabriel and Raphael, by the mere hearing of these words, I am already blessed by the knowledge of those blessed spirits themselves. It is no small profit to me, I say, if because I have learned from the Apostle to call by their names Paradise and the third Heaven, I have therefore, though not rapt thither with the Apostle, learned the secrets of Heaven from their names alone, and heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for man to utter. Foolish am I who, already knowing the name of my God, yet still groan superfluously every day, I know not why; uselessly sighing with the Prophet, and saying, Thy face O Lord will I seek (Ps. xxvii. 8). And When shall I come to appear before God (Ps. xlii. 2). And: Show us Thy Face, and we shall be saved (Ps. Ixxx. 3).

3. But what is it we do towards you which we are unwilling to be done towards us? Do you suppose that we are un willing that any monk departing from our monastery should be received in any other? Would that you might be able to save without us all those committed to us. If any monk of ours should have passed over to you for the sake of greater perfection, or from the desire of a severer life, not only are we not offended if you assist him in so good a wish, but we earnestly entreat you to do so: nor should we complain as persons offended, but confess ourselves to have received a great service. Then you deny what we had heard of you, that Brother B. as long as he was with you, practised the medical art by your consent or even by your order upon secular persons, and you accuse of falsehood him who has said this. Whether he has told the truth I know not; let him see to it; but this I know, that if he practised medicine, whether of his own accord, as you declare, or to obey you, as he testifies, he exposed his soul to great dangers. Who, then, could be so inhuman as not to help a person in such peril if he were able, or to counsel him if he were not able? And if, as you assert, that it was not compelled by obedience but by the desire of gain for himself, or a taste for wandering, that he used to travel about here and there making merchandise of his art; what cause existed for his leaving you? Was it because by the tightening of pastoral discipline, that was no longer permitted to him which had been permitted before? But in that case why did you, when he was with us, wishing to recall him, promise him that he should remain quiet in the convent, for the purpose of persuading him to return; unless that you knew that the man wished for this, and remembered that he had asked for it? but he, having already obtained among strangers what he could not obtain among his own, nor desiring to quit the certain for the uncertain, has held fast what he already en joyed, despising what was offered to him too late.

4. Cease, then, my brethren, cease, from being careful for a brother for whom it is not at all needful that you should take care: unless, perhaps, which I hope is not the case, you seek your own interests and not those of Jesus Christ, and love more the advantage which you derive from him than his salvation. For since he was always when among you a rolling stone,¹ and, as you write, expending for his own purposes what he acquired by his art, against the obli gations of his condition and the command of his abbot; let those who love him rejoice, because by the pity of God he has, while among us, been entirely cured. For we give our testimony to him that never now does he wander abroad on any pretence, but remains quietly in the monastery; he lives without complaint as a poor man among poor men. Far from regarding, as you say, the first engagements which he made as null and void, he now considers them valid, and accomplishes them all without exception, which, when with you, he failed to do; and this with a regularity and perfect obedience without which he deceives himself who trusts in his stability of place. I entreat you, then, brethren, that your indignation may now be calmed and your inquietude cease. But if otherwise, do what you please, write as you please, persecute me as much as you please; charity endures all things, suffers all things. For I am quite resolved not to abandon on account of this matter the purest affection, the deepest respect, and a brotherly consideration towards you.

Footnotes

1. Gyro vagus. VOL. I. 17 ↩