Letter CXCIII. To Cardinal Ivo, on the Same Subject

(A.D. 1140.)

That it is an unworthy thing that Abaelard should find partizans even in the Court of Rome.

To his beloved Ivo, by the grace of God Cardinal-priest of the holy Roman Church, BERNARD, Abbot of Clairvaux, desires that he love righteousness and hate iniquity.

Master Peter Abaelard, a monk without a rule, a prelate without a cure, neither keeps his order, nor is kept in order by it. He is a man inconsistent with himself, within a Herod, without a John; a thorough hypocrite, having nothing of a monk but the name and habit. But this is nothing to me. Each one will bear his own burden. There is something else, which I cannot keep silence about, which belongs to all who love the name of Christ. He loudly utters iniquity, he is corrupting the integrity of the faith, and the chastity of the Church. He crosses over the boundaries which our fathers have marked out in his discussions and writings about the faith, about the Sacraments, about the Holy Trinity; at his pleasure he alters, adds to or diminishes them. In his books and works he shows himself a manufacturer of falsehood, and a worshipper of false dogmas; proving his heresy, not so much by his error as by his obstinate adherence to his error. He is a man who goes beyond his measure, and who, by his skill in words, lessens or destroys the power of the Cross of Christ. He is ignorant of nothing in heaven or in earth, except himself. He was condemned at Soissons, with his work, in the presence of the Legate of the Roman Church. But as though that condemnation were not enough for him, he is again acting so as to be again condemned, and his last error now is worse than the first. Still he feels secure, since, as he boasts, he has the Cardinals and clergy of the Curia as his disciples; and he assumes that those, whose judgment and condemnation he ought to fear, are defenders of his past and present error. If anyone has the Spirit of God, let him call to mind that verse, Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate Thee, and am not I grieved with those that rise up against Thee (Ps. cxxxix. 21)? May God, by you and His other sons, free His Church from lying lips and from a deceitful tongue!