Letter CXLI. To Humbert, Abbot of Icny

(A.D. 1138.)

Bernard blames him severely for having suddenly and rashly abandoned his abbey and his charge.¹

May Almighty God forgive you. What has made you act thus? Who would have believed that a man endowed with such good gifts would have so stumbled and fallen into evil? How could a good tree have brought forth such bad fruit? How terrible is God in His judgments among the children of men! I am not surprised at this token of the power of the devil, but I am surprised that God should have allowed one whom I believe to have served Him so faithfully for so many years to fall so grievously. What will He do with me, an idle and careless servant, if He hands over His faithful follower for a time unto the will of his enemies? What reason, I ask you, have you for desert ing your charge? It is rather to be called an act of impiety, at which your children grieve and your adversaries rejoice. I wonder that you were not deterred by the example of Abbot Arnold, whose similar presumption was shortly afterwards punished with a well-deserved but dreadful end, as you well recollect. And he, indeed, as I know well, had some excuse, but you have none. Is it that your monks were disobedient to your commands, or the converts neglectful of their tasks, or your neighbours by any chance hostile to you and your house, or were your worldly posses sions too small and insufficient, inasmuch that you were forced to leave those whom you were not able to govern or to feed?

Take care, lest the words of God come to apply to you, They have hated me without a cause (S. John xv. 25). For what ought He to have done more for you, that He did not do? He planted for you a choice and beautiful vineyard; He surrounded it with the hedge of vowed continency; He dug in it a winepress of the strictest discipline; and He built a tower of holy poverty, the top of which reached unto heaven. He appointed you to till it and to take care of it. He honoured you in your labours, and, if you permit Him, He will crown those labours. But you, alas! are pulling down the wall that He has built, and exposing His vine, laden with fruitful branches, to all that pass by that way. Who is to prevent the wild boar out of the wood from rooting it up, and -the wild beast of the field from devouring it? You write to me that you are not afraid to die under such scandal and the anathema of our lord the Pope, but I can only wonder how you can think this a good preparation for your death. Moreover, even if you had no other course open to you, might not some other time have been chosen but that when I am kept away by the necessities of the universal Church, and so am prevented from lending any aid to that unhappy community which you are rendering easy of attack? I beseech you, by Him who was crucified for you, that you cease from tormenting those who have already enough affliction, and desist from adding sorrow to sorrow. To tell you the truth, I am so affected by this grievous rent made in the Church at large that my soul is aweary of life, even if you and yours could manage to live in peace.

Footnotes

1. Humbert joined the monks of Clairvaux from Casa Dei; then he was made by Bernard first Abbot of the new monastery of Igny, in the Diocese of Rheims. Desiring a life of privacy he resigned his office A.r>. 1 138, in which year this Letter was written from Italy. In spite of it, however, he adhered to his pur pose, and Guerric was chosen to succeed him. He die^ at Clairvaux A.D. 1148, as we shall see in the second volume, in reference to the sermon that Bernard delivered after his death. ↩