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Letter LXIX. To Guv, Abbot of Trois Fontaines

He instructs Guy what to do. The latter had consecrated by mistake a Chalice, in which, by oversight of the servers, there was no wine.12

1. I know, my dear friend, that you are distressed, and I praise you for being so, if your distress be not excessive; for you are, I believe, distressed, as the Apostle says, according to God (2 Cor. vu. 9); nor is it doubtful that sorrow of this kind will be one day changed into joy. Therefore, be angry and sin not, for you will sin not less by too much anger than by no anger at all. For not to be angry when where is cause for anger is to be unwilling to correct what is wrong; but to be more angry than there is cause for being is to add sin to sin; and if it is wrong not to correct what is wrong, how much more would it not be to increase it? If judgment depended on the issue of actions inculpated, your sorrow, however great, could not be blamed, since, unquestionably, it rests on the fact that the fault had been great. For a fault would appear the graver the more sacred is the matter which it is concerned with. But as it is the motive and not the matter, the in tention and not the result of actions which distinguishes between praise and blame, according to the word of the Lord, If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light: but if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness (S. Matt. vi. 22, 23); therefore, in the examination of your act, I consider the dignity of holy things is not so much the point to be regarded as your own intention. Furthermore, our Prior and I, after thinking over the whole matter privately and consulting together about it, decided that in it there was ignorance on your part, and negligence on the part of the servers; but evidently no ill intention in either. And you know well that no work is good unless it be founded in good will. How then can an act not done with consent of the will be a great sin? Otherwise, if it were the case that without the assent of the will, a g-ood > o action indeed obtains no approval, but a bad one severe punishment; that would be as much as to say, that for one and the same cause both evil is reckoned and good not credited; and whosoever thinks thus let him assert, if he will, that good does not prevail over evil, but that evil prevails over good.

2. Nevertheless, in order to set at rest your troubled conscience, and lest perhaps this lamentable occurrence should be a warning of some secret sin lurking still in the monastery, I enjoin upon you by way of penance to recite3 the Seven Penitential Psalms daily until Easter, seven times prostrating yourself, and to receive the discipline seven times. In this manner also let him who ministered to you at that Mass make satisfaction. But as for him who had made the preparations4 beforehand and had forgotten to put wine into the chalice, his fault I consider greater than that of others, and, if you agree with me, I leave him to your judgment. If a report of this has gone forth among the brethren, I think that they also should severally receive the discipline, that that may be fulfilled which is written, Bear ye one another's burdens (Gal. vi. 2). Afterwards, I greatly approve of your having poured some wine into the chalice, upon a particle of the consecrated Host, when the negligence had been found out, though it was found out too late; and I consider that the liquid, though not changed by a proper and solemn consecration into the Body and Blood of Christ, yet became hallowed by the contact with the Sacred Body.5 It is said, nevertheless, that some other writer, I know not whom, was of another opinion, and thought that the Sacrifice could not be without the three — bread, wine, and water; so that if either of the three should be in any case wanting, the other two were not consecrated. But on this point every one must be satisfied in his own mind.

3. For myself, if the same thing had happened to me, I should (according to my poor opinion) proceed to repair the omission in one out of two ways: either that which you did, or I would rather have iterated the sacred words from that place where it is said, " Likewise after supper He took the cup" (simili modo postquam coenatum est), and so have supplied what remained to do of the sacrifice.6 For I could not possibly doubt that the Body was already consecrated, according to the Rite of the Church, since I have learned from the Church, what she also has learned from her Lord, to present Bread and Wine together; yet (I have not learned) to be confident that the Mystery is con summated in these together. Since, then, according to the custom of the Church, the Body is perfected from bread, before the Blood from wine: if by forgetfulness, that which is to be consecrated the later, is presented too late, I do not see why that lateness of the latter should annul the preceding consecration. For I think that if it had pleased the Lord, after His Body made from bread, to intermit for a little while the consecration of the wine, or even altogether to omit it, none the less His Body which He had made'7 would have remained, nor would things not yet done affect those done. It is not that I deny that bread and wine mixed with water ought to be presented together, on the contrary, I assert that it ought to be thus done and not otherwise; but it is one thing to blame negligence, and another to deny efficacy (as a result of it); in the one case we assert that all things are not done as they should be, in the other we deny that they are done at all. In the meantime, you have here wrhat I think and feel about this matter, without the least unwillingness to consider either your opinion, if it be wiser than mine, or that of any other better qualified person.

Footnotes

  1. He was the second abbot of Trois Fontaines, and has been already praised in Letter 63; he had succeeded Roger, the first abbot, in 1 1 29. See, respecting his death, Letter 71. ↩

  2. The Abbey of Trois Fontaines, first daughter house of Clairvaux, was founded, as William, Abbot of S. Thierry, states (Life of S. Bernard, B. i. c. 13), in 1 1 18, in the Diocese of Chalons-sur-Marne, with the assistance of William of Champeaux, then Bishop of that see. It was by the Abbey of Trois Fontaines that was created that of Haute Fon taine, in the same Diocese of Chalons-sur-Marne.' It was another abbey of Trois Fontaines, or of SS. Vincent and Anastasius, at Tres Fontes, near Rome, to which abbey the election of Abbot Turold refers, o f which mention is made in Letter 306. ↩

  3. Decantare, i.f., to recite, in which sense the word is used everywhere among old writers. "The holy Bishop Ambrose," says the Ven. Bede, speaking concerning the Faith, directs the faithful to recite (decantent) the words of the Creed in matins. ↩

  4. Some MSS. have apparaverat. ↩

  5. This was also the opinion of James de Vitry, besides the scholastics (Hist. Occident, p. 427). He proposes the present case (Ibid. 444). See my Comm.in Ordinem Rom. and our Edmund Martene, de Ritiius monasticis (B. ii. c. 7). ↩

  6. See General Rubrics of the Mass: chap., " Concerning Defects in Matter; " art., " Concerning Defect of Wine." ↩

  7. Fecerat, otherwise fucrat. ↩

Chapter 69 of 491